I'm using the Unit of Work Pattern in my DAL, but I need to perform data access in Application_Start. What should I do?

Question

Given:

When using the Unit Of Work pattern with an ORM in ASP.NET, the UnitOfWork object holds a reference to HttpContext.

Question:

But what if I need to perform some data access in Application_Start (especially in IIS7)?
Is the Unit Of Work pattern still viable?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 01 '12 at 20:32

Why is your unit of work holding a reference to HttpContext? To get at session state? If this is the case, have it hold onto something more abstract (i.e. an interface), which in Application_Start will represent a concrete class that does not need HttpContext, and everywhere else will be another (that uses HttpContext internally)

I'm using the Unit of Work Pattern in my DAL, but I need to perform data access in Application_Start. What should I do?

1 Answers1