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CRUD Applications and the Business Layer: A Practical Perspective
October 10, 2010 • 1 min read
I had a great discussion with my supervisor about application architecture.
The question at hand was, what’s the value of the Business Layer? Most applications I’ve worked on are CRUD applications. Is there any value in a thin veneer over the data layer?
In my experience, most business layers consist of pass through methods.
If there isn’t any value, call the data layer directly. Handle the business logic on a case-by-case basis. In most cases this will entail creating a service class to encapsulate the business logic.
In the end, having a business layer that provides nothing but pass through methods is pre-optimization. It’s the “it will save me down the road” mentality. 95% of the time, it’s a waste, it creates multiple of points of change and it decreases maintainability.
Author: Chuck Conway is an AI Engineer with nearly 30 years of software engineering experience. He builds practical AI systems—content pipelines, infrastructure agents, and tools that solve real problems—and shares what he’s learning along the way. Connect with him on social media: X (@chuckconway) or visit him on YouTube and on SubStack.