We are trying to remove the global.asax from our many web applications in favor of HttpModules that are in a common code base. This works really well for many application events such as BeginRequest and PostAuthentication, but there is no Application Start event exposed in the HttpModule.

I can think of a couple of smelly ways to overcome this deficit. For example, I can probably do this:

protected virtual void BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Log.Debug("Entered BeginRequest...");
    var app = HttpContext.Current.Application;
    var hasBeenSet app["HasBeenExecuted"] == null ? false : true;

    if(!hasBeenSet)
    {
        app.Lock();
        // ... do app level code

        app.Add("HasBeenSet", true);
        app.Unlock();
    }

    // do regular begin request stuff ...
}

But this just doesn't smell well to me.

What is the best way to invoke some application begin logic without having a global.asax?