I recently used the "Beer House" starter kit design model on a website that I built.  The Beer House Starter kit is a very good design, but I found it to be too time consuming when building my web app.  When is using n-tier architecture good?  And what other methods should be used for different situations?  How do I decide what to use, when to use, and where do I find out about different design models?

 One thing i found with the BeerHouse project is that the DAL code was very cumbersome and repetetive.... not saying this is bad, however, it was not efficient to work with.

 Have you looked at projects like SubSonic (http://subsonicproject.com/)? This provides a very fast, efficient way to produce your DAL/BLL and it is actively worked on and coming along nicely.

 
HTH

Amar
 

Sorry... forgot to mention that there is a product called "The Commerce Starter Kit" which shows a beerhouse like project made with SubSonic so you can see exactly how it works.

amar 

And what other methods should be used for different situations?  How do I decide what to use, when to use, and where do I find out about different design models? 

It can be very difficult to answer this question.....

check this link and see if it can  help  http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/189.aspx

Hope my suggestion helps

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