Question

I end up creating a lot of business objects for a task as simple as

returning a list of years from database.

My current approach is to make a year class file then make a YearCollection:List<year>class file etc.

How can I return a list from a DAL method without creating
separate class files for each task ?

Answer 1

You can return a List<int> from your DAL method

public List<int> GetYears()
{
    var years = new List<int>();

    //create the reader

    while(reader.Read())
    {
        years.Add(reader.GetInt32(0));
    }

    return years;
}