>While I realize this is the 'right' way to do things

Depends on what you're idea of "right" is gonna be. You have to consider what exactly this abstaction is going to do for you. I mean, don't you already have that layer? Isn't it the compiler just figuring out how to do what you're talking about?

For example, depending on the app, the right way could just be you wrote a simple business class that connects to your data sourece with ADO.NET and just exposes the data set in a property. Any UI can connect to it, have the DataSet availble to directly work with, but have actual business processes in the business class.

The only part I'd be really concerned about is what happens if I have to change how we connect to the database. In most cases you'll just need a single custom connection string, which could be exposes in a config file or shared application obejct. If more custom stuff needs to be done, that application object could just take care if it via delgation.

What I'm still not sure about is, besides an interesting way to protect your intellectual property through obscurity, what would those extra layers actually do for you?