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• What is a typical profit margin for a small, custom software development shop?

  - by jamieb

  I help manage a small (5-15 employees), custom software development shop. We're hired by various clients to produce web or mobile-based applications. We make everything from pretty simple $10k e-commerce websites to very complex applications that might cost $100k over the course of several months. Our clients are generally start-ups, but we also occasionally work with more established companies (including the federal government). I'm just curious what kind of profit margin would be typical for a business fitting this profile?

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• Algorithm for flattening overlapping ranges

  - by Joseph

  I am looking for a nice way of flattening (splitting) a list of potentially-overlapping numeric ranges. The problem is very similar to that of this question: Fastest way to split overlapping date ranges, and many others. However, the ranges are not only integers, and I am looking for a decent algorithm that can be easily implemented in Javascript or Python, etc. Example Data: Example Solution: Apologies if this is a duplicate, but I am yet to find a solution.

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• Self-imposed lockout from program

  - by Alex

  I'm plagued with a lack of willpower. I recently started looking for solutions, and came across a program for macs called SelfControl which completely blocks one's access to a given set of websites for a given period of time (you can delete the program/restart your computer/do almost anything and it will still block those sites for the specified time period, and doesn't require a password to do it.) Unfortunately, there are no windows analogues. The one that comes the closest is Cold Turkey. It has the functionality whereby you set a time in the future, specify a list of websites (or programs - eg explorer, firefox, chrome) and you are blocked from accessing them for the whole duration. No password can undo it, no system reboot, etc. The problem is that the program is a buggy piece of garbage, and in order to ensure that you're not locked out from websites forever, you have to run an uninstaller which is just an exe file accessible at any time which completely defeats the purpose of a self-imposed program lockout. I want to make a better version of that program, or find a simple way to prevent access to a given set of programs over a given period of time with no way around it. I've only taken a few introductory courses in java (math major), but the internet is really having a negative effect on my studies, and the only way I can do work is to eliminate all distractions. What do I need to learn in order to make a program with the following properties: Given a set of .exe files, and a time in the future , this program will prevent access to the given .exe files until current time = given time restarting the computer doesn't interfere with the program, one can't uninstall the program until current time = given time, one can't create another instance of the program to block itself I don't care how much programming knowledge i need to acquire in order to make this program, so please give me a specific list of things that I need to study in order to make this happen, or if something like this exists, then please let me know.

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• I didn't mean to become a database developer, but now I am. Should I stop or try to get better?

  - by pretlow majette

  20 years ago I couldn't afford even a cheap POS program when I opened my first surf shop in the Virgin Islands. I bought a copy of Paradox (remember that?) in 1990 and spent months in a back room scratching out a POS application. Over many iterations, including a switch to Access (2000)/SQL Server (2003), I built a POS and backoffice solution that runs four stores with multiple cash registers, a warehouse and office. Until recently, all my stores were connected to the same LAN (in a small shopping center) and performance wasn't an issue. Now that we've opened a location in the States that's changed. Connecting to my local server via the internet has slowed that locations application to a crawl. This is partly due to the slow and crappy dsl service we have in the Virgin Islands, and partly due to my less-than-professional code and sql. With other far-away stores in the works, I need a better solution. I like my application. My staff knows it well, and I'm not inclined to take on the expense of a proper commercial solution. So where does that leave me? I should probably host my sql online to sidestep the slow dsl here. I think I can handle cleaning up my SQL querries to speed that up a bit. What about Access? My version seems so old, but I don't like the newer versions with the 'ribbon'. There are so many options... Should I be learning Visual Studio with an eye on moving completely to the web? Will my VBA skills help me at all there? I don't have the luxury of a year at the keyboard to figure it out anymore. What about dotnetnuke, sharepoint, or lightswitch? They all seem like possibilities, but even understanding their capabilities is daunting. I'm pretty deep into it, but maybe I should bail and hire a consultant or programmer. That sounds expensive tho, and there's no guarantee there either... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or, if anybody is interested in buying a small chain of surf shops...

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• Will Beej's Guide to Network programming point me the right way to be able to make multiplayer games and a web broswer?

  - by Logan545

  I'm new to socket programming in C, and I've found the Beej's Guide to Networking programming. It looks fine and all, however, I just wanted to ask whether this tutorial will point me in the right direction in terms of network programming. I plan to build a game in opengl that will be multiplayer using c+ and possibly a web browser. I know this tutorial would by no means teach me how to do this, but would this be a good way to start off on my path?

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• Graphical Interface and Object Selection/Manipulation

  - by ToriArendt

  I have a project I want to try to implement, but I'm kind of stuck on how to get started. I know there are probably a lot of resources that I can look at, but I'm really just stuck on what to even search for and where to begin. Basically, I have a program written in Java that separates 3D coordinates from a 3D reconstructed model into different objects. I then want to be able to perform a logistic regression on these objects to determine if they are type A or type B. But first, I need to classify a training set of objects as type A or B by hand. I don't know ANYTHING about graphing or user interfaces in Java, so I have been plotting the coordinates of a given object in MATLAB so that I can visualize the object and assign it a type. Now, as I am trying to make this program more "user friendly" I want to create an interface in Java where I can simply graph all the coordinates of the objects from the entire 3D model (on the same graph). I then want to be able to click on the each object and assign it to be either of type A or type B. I hope this description makes sense and someone can point me in the direction of something that will help me. I'm sorry if some of this terminology is off; I'm a bit new to software development. P.S. If anyone also has some tips on implementing logistic regression in Java, I'm sure I'll need them down the road :).

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• Advice on designing web application with a 40+ year lifetime

  - by user2708395

  Scenario Currently, I am apart of a health care project whose main requirement is to capture data with unknown attributes using user generated forms by health care providers. The second requirement is that data integrity is key and that the application will be used for 40+ years. We are currently migrating the client's data from the past 40 years from various sources (Paper, Excel, Access, etc...) to the database. Future requirements are: Workflow management of forms Schedule management of forms Security/Role based management Reporting engine Mobile/Tablet support Situation Only 6 months in, the current (contracted) architect/senior programmer has taken the "fast" approach and has designed a poor system. The database is not normalized, the code is coupled, the tiers have no dedicated purpose and data is starting to go missing since he has designed some beans to perform "deletes" on the database. The code base is extremely bloated and there are jobs just to synchronize data since the database is not normalized. His approach has been to rely on backup jobs to restore missing data and doesn't seem to believe in re-factoring. Having presented my findings to the PM, the architect will be removed when his contract ends. I have been given the task to re-architect this application. My team consists of me and one junior programmer. We have no other resources. We have been granted a 6-month requirement freeze in which we can focus on re-building this system. I suggested using a CMS system like Drupal, but for policy reasons at the client's organization, the system must be built from scratch. This is the first time that I will be designing a system with a 40+ lifespan. I have only worked on projects with 3-5 year lifespans, so this situation is very new, yet exciting. Questions What design considerations will make the system more "future proof"? What experiences have you had in designing such systems - both failures and successes? What questions should be asked to the client/PM to make the system more "future proof"?

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• Testing a codebase with sequential cohesion

  - by iveqy

  I've this really simple program written in C with ncurses that's basically a front-end to sqlite3. I would like to implement TDD to continue the development and have found a nice C unit framework for this. However I'm totally stuck on how to implement it. Take this case for example: A user types a letter 'l' that is captured by ncurses getch(), and then an sqlite3 query is run that for every row calls a callback function. This callback function prints stuff to the screen via ncurses. So the obvious way to fully test this is to simulate a keyboard and a terminal and make sure that the output is the expected. However this sounds too complicated. I was thinking about adding an abstraction layer between the database and the UI so that the callback function will populate a list of entries and that list will later be printed. In that case I would be able to check if that list contains the expected values. However, why would I struggle with a data structure and lists in my program when sqlite3 already does this? For example, if the user wants to see the list sorted in some other way, it would be expensive to throw away the list and repopulate it. I would need to sort the list, but why should I implement sorting when sqlite3 already has that? Using my orginal design I could just do an other query sorted differently. Previously I've only done TDD with command line applications, and there it's really easy to just compare the output with what I'm expected. An other way would be to add CLI interface to the program and wrap a test program around the CLI to test everything. (The way git.git does with it's test-framework). So the question is, how to add testing to a tightly integrated database/UI.

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• MongoDB: Replicate data in documents vs. “join”

  - by JavierCane

  Disclaimer: This is a question derived from this one. What do you think about the following example of use case? I have a table containing orders. These orders has a lot of related information needed by my current queries (think about the products; the buyer information; the region, country and state of the sale point; and so on) In order to think with a de-normalized approach, I don't have to put identifiers of these related items in my main orders collection. Instead, I have to repeat all the information for each order (ie: I will repeat the buyer's name, surname, etc. for each of its orders). Assuming the previous premise, I'm committing to maintain all the data related to an order without a lot of updates (because if I modify the buyer's name, I'll have to iterate through all orders updating the ones made by the same buyer, and as MongoDB blocks at a document level on updates, I would be blocking the entire order at the update moment). I'll have to replicate all the products' related data? (ie: category, maker and optional attributes like color, size…) What if a new feature is requested and I've to make a lot of queries with the products "as the entry point of the query"? (ie: reports showing the products' sales performance grouping by region, country, or whatever) Is it fair enough to apply the $unwind operation to my orders original collection? (What about the performance?) I should have to do another collection with these queries in mind and replicate again all the products' information (and their orders)? Wouldn't be better to store a product_id in the original orders collection in order to be more tolerable to requirements change? (What about emulating JOINs?) The optimal approach would be a mixed solution with a RDBMS system like MySQL in order to retrieve the complete data? I mean: store products, users, and location identifiers in the orders collection and have queries in MySQL like getAllUsersDataByIds in which I would perform a SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_id IN ( :identifiers_retrieved_from_the_mongodb_query )

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• How to react to an office harassment based on my profession ? [closed]

  - by bob from jersey

  A lot of my co-workers (not developers, people from the other departments) who are framing me in the classical "nerd" stereotype, and with that acting disturbing towards me. Of course they are not aggressive or anything, since we are in a work environment having rules on it's own, plus we are all grownups now, but they are on a "quite war" against me (not particularly against me, they are against all developers, but I am the only one who dares to speak about it). I hear names, "nerd", "geek", "cyborg", "outsider" and so on, it's really inappropriate. Of course, nothing is said in our faces, but, you know, "you hear things over". Also this general feeling of "them not liking us at all" can be sensed in the air all the time. And while it is not a problem for a few weeks, a larger duration of constant office harassment (going for months now), can be really annoying and can cause a serious drop in the development performance, which will (inevitably) lead to problems with the management (maybe getting me fired). I want to know, should I continue with my current defensive strategy (passively ignoring their inappropriate labels) or should I switch into a more aggressive maneuvers, like giving them logical reasons why their antisocial behavior should be banned?

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• Starting software projects

  - by shox

  Always , when i try to start new project , with what i think new ideas , first of all i search the web to try to find some thing same, most of the time ( if not all ) , i find that my ideas of new project have been implemented hundred of times , i think every one in software industry , feel this every day , the question is : when should i approve an idea and start building it , although its implemented hundred of times around the world . How i can make my way in trying of build something new

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• Employers and intellectual property 2

  - by Rick

  I have a question about intellectual property, I am currently a manager in a small manufacturing firm. The owners are driven by greed and don't appreciate the development process of complex machinery and are happy just to send things out half done. I on the other hand think that it should be done properly as breakdown in the field can be costly, embarrassing. They seem to have all of us running around doing most of the work out of hours using the attitude of "Be grateful to have a job" yet no one has a contract or any security or any agreement in place. For a couple of the projects i am using PLC's and doing the code in my own time and the testing during company time, and i am aware that they cannot support their own machines if i left, but as i created the code in my own time who owns it? The have asked my to put in a shutdown code for a maintenance request after a given length of time, could this be classed as criminal damage or anything illegal apart from immoral? (we sell the machines with 12 month warrantee, shut down after) But as time goes on I'm getting rather fed up of the companies attitude toward the client. I am considering keeping the clients as my own and get them to contact me directly In the shutdown code. By doing something like this is a trial version contact me for a full license? I wouldn't feel bad for my current employer as he is not afraid to S***t on people as he has been evolved in numerous law suits and has over 30 failed companies leaving people and customers high and dry, we have took the company this far on the reputation of the workers and and i can see things heading like all the other companies he has owned and taking our reputations with him. So i suppose now i have set the scene, if i code into it to contact me directly in the shutdown could there be any legal impact on me, as i rightly or wrongly think i own the code and designs? Cheers R

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• How do you make your applications looking more sexy?

  - by Roflcoptr

  The other title of this question could also be: How to improve my creativeness? During the past years I noticed that a loot of my small applications that I write in my free time to ease my life could also be useful for some of my friends. They asked me to get them a copy. Even if the applications are working as they should I feel a little bit embarrassed because they GUIs are all looking really ugly. The problem is, I always used standard and default-looking Buttons, TextBoxes etc. Now I thought about how to improve this. And yes I know it is possible to use themes, ImageButtons, ColorBrushes and so on. And now the real problem is: I can't really see which colors fit together and make a good design. Are there any techniques, books, other resources that help to improve to get a feeling for good designs, color combinations, UI element choose?

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• How do you describe your profession in a public place or conference?

  - by Jenko

  I've often been in situations where non-technical people ask me, "So, what do you do?" ... and I've found it somewhat hard to describe that I spend the entirely of my days pouring over colored text. Of course, its quite reasonable to say "I design software" or "I develop computer applications", but that still feels somewhat "lame" and generic. So how do you describe your profession in public situations? are there any insights for those of us less gifted in public speaking?

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• How to stay creative when going through tough emotional times (divorce, family death, etc)? [closed]

  - by gaearon

  Hi everyone. I believe this is not a duplicate of motivation question because I want to especially emphasize the emotional breakdown. You may conquer lack of motivation by working harder and getting through the dip, however this was not the case when I was separating with my girlfriend. I actually liked the project, it was (and it still is!) my first programming job at an amazing workplace and I wasn't being pressured in any way but I found myself absolutely unable to code, blankly staring at the screen, my thoughts disorganized, the feeling of emptiness all in my chest. I could perform some straightforward coding but anything that involves creative thinking, designing abstractions, solving new problems and, worst of all, fixing bugs in legacy code, completely wiped out my brain to the point I started avoiding work, which I never have done before. Coffee only used to make it worse. Eventually I got over that, and I remember the happy day I solved a problem elegantly and thought—hell, first time in a month! Thankfully the project wasn't top priority and I had the time to catch up. I wonder now, was there any other way to boost my productivity back then? I bet people would say I should've taken a break—and I think I really should have—but what if I needed the money? Didn't want to lose my job? Are there any ways to trick your brain into being creative despite emotional losses? From your experience, would it be worth talking to my boss, collegues?

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• From Co-op to fulltime help with salary negotation [closed]

  - by Peter

  Hey I'm a coop student that worked at a particular medium size printing company for 8 months. I had a good time it was lax, sometimes insufficiently challenging but none the less I learned a whole lot. I stuck with them for another 5 months (including this month) at the same rate I was paid then, doing testing work, tool development, taking care of emergencies when the lead developers were away, and other smaller projects and now bigger projects and problem handling (bad printer output etc.). I know their website inside out (ecommerce), and I know their printing software inside out and have made many changes to them both without a hitch. I have also done a lot of refactoring of the existing code base which as far as Im concerned, I believe am the only one to do those sorts of restructuring even though there is constant talk about it. I guess the unit testing paid off and lets me see the value in modularity if even a tad more. Never the less I have faith in my skill and the restructuring I did turned out better than I had imagined . Now the problem is that I finish school next month and so I asked for a full time spot the month after. They have been expanding and have hired a new guy a few months after my coop spot, and just now they hired a new guy to deal with the CRM application. The lead developer who wrote all of the software had left 5 months ago so it was up to all of us to learn what he had done over 4 years (including db, networking). So now I'm afraid that if I assert myself for a salary similar to the other guys, which I believe I am certainly on par with, that I would be seen as ingrateful. It's hard to flip a switch and say, hey double my pay, although when I'm working with their bread and butter (printers) and writing new features, refactoring the whole application for extensibility. I love it regardless of pay. I also feel maybe I'm replaceeble, although nobody knows the website better than myself and the lead web dev (not by a long shot), and nobody knows the printer software/drivers better than myself. I just thought they would have brought up a raise earlier on, and now it feels like they don't value my work. I'm also tired of worrying about it. I think my question is, well what do I do next?

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• Developing my momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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• java or .net need carrer guidance [closed]

  - by s.nigam

  First of all let me thank you all for reading & devoting time for my question. I am developer with around 3.7 years of experience in .net. I recently discussed & visited some of the websites which states that java is better then .net, a I also discussed with some of the experience persons all suggested me to switch to java of course spring, struts etc. As Java developer is being paid high then .net one. I personally think I should go for web services SOAP, XML etc. Kindly help me I am bit confused. Thanks

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• A generic Re-usable C# Property Parser utility [on hold]

  - by Shyam K Pananghat

  This is about a utility i have happened to write which can parse through the properties of a data contracts at runtime using reflection. The input required is a look like XPath string. since this is using reflection, you dont have to add the reference to any of your data contracts thus making pure generic and re- usable.. you can read about this and get the full c# sourcecode here. Property-Parser-A-C-utility-to-retrieve-values-from-any-Net-Data-contracts-at-runtime Now about the doubts which i have about this utility. i am using this utility enormously i many places of my code I am using Regex repeatedly inside a recursion method. does this affect the memmory usage or GC collection badly ?do i have to dispose this manually. if yes how ?. The statements like obj.GetType().GetProperty() and obj.GetType().GetField() returns .net "object" which makes difficult or imposible to introduce generics here. Does this cause to have any overheads like boxing ? on an overall, please suggest to make this utility performance efficient and more light weight on memmory

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• What common programming problems are best solved by using prototypes and closures?

  - by vemv

  As much as I understand both concepts, I can't see how can I take advantage of JavaScript's closures and prototypes aside from using them for creating instantiable and/or encapsulated class-like blocks (which seems more of a workaround than an asset to me) Other JS features such as functions-as-values or logical evaluation of non-booleans are much easier to fall in love with... What common programming problems are best solved by using propotypal inheritance and closures?

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• O'reilly certification in PHP worth it?

  - by editzombie

  I asked this question over on stack overflow but I didn't realise it wasn't really the place for not so technical questions. I've seen quite a few related threads on this forum so I thought I'd try and get some feedback here: This is my first time asking a question on this forum, though I´ve read it a lot. I apologise if this is repeating a thread. I´m interested in getting into web development. I am a video editor by trade but living in Spain the way things are at the moment its very difficult to find work. I have some very basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and a little bit of flash and have designed a few little personal websites myself. I also worked for a online marketing production company where I worked a little on blog design in Blogger amongst other social media. So thats my background, but I´m trying to expand my skills and get into web development as a career or in general part of my skill base, I was thinking particularly about PHP/MySQL. I have worked a little on some of the Lynda.com tutorials and have invested in a book (Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache). I´m still finding it very difficult to progress. I know I should really try some practice projects (any reccomendations would be welcome). But I was also thinking about doing one of the O´Reilly certification courses and was wondering whether it would be worthwhile for a noob like me. I hear that the courses are associated with an American University which I guess gives it more clout. Any other thoughts you guys have about how to make progress in learning web development would be fantasic. Thanks in advance.

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• How do I get from a highly manual process of development and deploy to continuous integration?

  - by Tonny Dourado

  We have a development process which is completely manual. No unit tests, interface tests are manual, and merging and integration are as well. How could we go from this state to implementing continuous integration with full (or at least close to full) automation of build and test? We have a pretty intense development cycle, and are not currently using agile, so switching to agile with CI in one move would be a very complicated and expensive investment. How can we take it slowly, and still moving constantly towards a CI environment?

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• Design for future changes or solve the problem at hand

  - by Naveen

  While writing the code or during design do you try to generalize the problem at the first instance itself or try to solve that very specific problem. I am asking this because, trying to generalize the problem tends to complicate the things (which may not be necessary) and on the otherhand it will be very difficult to extend the specific solution if there is a change in the requirement. I guess the solution is to find the middle path which is easier said than done. How do you tackle this type of problem ? If you start generalizing it at what point of time you know that this much of generalization is sufficient ?

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• Optimization of time-varying parameters

  - by brama

  I need to find an optimal set of "n" parameter values that minimize an objective function (a 2-hr simulation of a system). I have looked at genetic algorithm and simulated annealing methods, but was wondering if there are any better algorithms and guidance on their merits and limitations. With the above optimization methods I can find the optimal parameter values that hold true for the entire simulation duration. Incase, I want to find the optimal "time varying" parameter values (parameter values change with time during the 2-hr simulation), are there any methods/ideas other than making each time varying parameter value a variable to optimize? Any thoughts?

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• Entity Framework and layer separation

  - by Thomas

  I'm trying to work a bit with Entity Framework and I got a question regarding the separation of layers. I usually use the UI - BLL - DAL approach and I'm wondering how to use EF here. My DAL would usually be something like GetPerson(id) { // some sql return new Person(...) } BLL: GetPerson(id) { Return personDL.GetPerson(id) } UI: Person p = personBL.GetPerson(id) My question now is: since EF creates my model and DAL, is it a good idea to wrap EF inside my own DAL or is it just a waste of time? If I don't need to wrap EF would I still place my Model.esmx inside its own class library or would it be fine to just place it inside my BLL and work some there? I can't really see the reason to wrap EF inside my own DAL but I want to know what other people are doing. So instead of having the above, I would leave out the DAL and just do: BLL: GetPerson(id) { using (TestEntities context = new TestEntities()) { var result = from p in context.Persons.Where(p => p.Id = id) select p; } } What to do?

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