So you're building your data-driven application and you've got an ADO.NET Entity Model that represents an abstraction around your database. Maybe you're even pretty savvy and you've used inheritance and some filters to enhance the entity model so that it really is an entity model and not just a raw translation of your database schema into objects. One thing that I have noticed is that in a lot of sample code, a lot of utility functions end up being put in inefficient locations because people forget that the entity model is a partial class. This means that you can extend the model with your own properties and methods.