This may seem like a stupid question, especially after years of carefully creating them. Yet these thoughts about DAO arose in my mind when I watched Adam Bien’s Real World JavaEE rerun on Parley’s. In his talk, Adam says he doesn’t use DAOs anymore - even though he has one ready so as to please architects (them again). My first reaction was utter rejection: layered architecture is at the root of decoupling and decoupling is a requirement for an evolutive design.