>> inhertiance plays little or no role in middle-tier work.

I keep reading that. It's nonsense.

It totally depends on the requirements and the architecture of the middle tier. As soon as you need a Strategy design pattern, or Decoraror, or Chain of Hooks, for example, you're goint to appreciate having the inheritance.

Maybe you're building one-off middle-tier objects. I'm not, and I chuckle everytime I read that sweeping and unsubstantiateable statement (at least, it's false in the designs I'm seeing).

Andre