In this chapter, we built the database, a data access layer, a business logic layer, and a presentation layer for our Content Management System. We've only built a small part of the eventual application, and we'll need to add to all four of these architectural tiers as we continue the book. However, you should have a working knowledge of the basic architecture we are working with.
We first defined a table structure for our database, which we will expand upon in future chapters. A major reason for using a relational database management system such as Microsoft's SQL Server is the ability to grow the database as your application grows. We also created a data access layer to abstract access to the database. This allows us to write code to use other types of database engines without changing the rest of the application to match. It also allows us to access the database with minimal additional code from other layers in our architecture.
The business logic layer we created is extremely simple...