Two weeks ago I finally decided to port our intranet site to DNN.  I used the latest source (5.6.1, I believe) and after getting the department structure in place I began my attempt to port the first of my intranet apps into DNN modules.  I use SubSonic 2.2 for DAL generation in all of my .NET projects and thought it would be a snap to include it in my DNN module development as well.  After running into problems early on I decided to started Googling around the web to see if anyone else is using SS as their DAL for DNN modules and if so, how they go about setting up their development environment, etc...  Most of what I found was older material (2007, 2008) so I'm wondering if I have missed the boat on something better or if it was decided that using SS as the DAL for DNN just isn't practical?  

If there is anyone out there who's "in the know" that could offer any pointers for me I'd be much obliged!  Just trying to get things rolling here.  

Thanks!
Mike D 

Thanks for your reply Wes.  I guess problems might be a strong word...  Design challenges might be a better way to put it.  Since I'm developing modules that are for use only within my company I'm not concerned with compatibility or being able to distribute the modules to other DNN users.  Part of what I'm trying to understand is where the DAL should be generated to within the module and if this is even important.  Next question is how I would generate the DAL classes without a web.config.  For other (non DNN) work that I'm doing I use the External Tools command to enable one click DAL generation for Web, Windows, Console apps, etc...  For DNN I created one that generates the DAL in VB (I'm a C# guy) but when I try to run my site to debug the new module I get the error about "It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level."  I guess I could include a web.config when I generate the DAL and then remove it before I build the site, but I can't imagine that's the way things are supposed to be done.  

Any thoughts?

Great news that it can be done Robert, thanks!  Could you tell me more about your development environment?  Did you follow the model that Chris Hammond describes in his blog posts?  I setup my development environment using this blog post - http://goo.gl/dh6pE .  This has me developing my module in the DesktopModules directory.  The project is setup to build to the bin directory of the DNN website (../../bin) which seems to work fine.  I found that in my module project I can include a web.config as long as I only add the parts that are needed for the SS DAL generation.  I think I'm OK up to this point but I just got there yesterday and have been in meetings all day today and unable to test any more than that.  

A question for you: If you have a number of custom developed modules do you import the same DAL dll into each one?  How are they updated when you update your DAL project, is that automatic?