My team is in the process of designing a domain model which will hide various different data sources behind a unified repository abstraction. One of the main drivers for this approach is the very high probability that these data sources will undergo significant change in the near future and we don't want to be re-writing business logic when this happens. One data source will be our membership database which was originally implemented using the default ASP.Net Membership Provider. The membership provider is tied to the System.Web.Security namespace but we have a design guideline requiring that our domain model layer is not dependent upon System.Web (or any other implementation/environment dependency) as it will be consumed in different environments - nor do we want our websites directly communicating with databases.

I am considering what would be a good approach to reconciling the MembershipProvider approach with our abstracted n-tier architecture. My initial feeling is that we could create a "DomainMembershipProvider" which interacts with the domain model and then implement objects in the model which deal with the repository and handle validation/business logic. The repository would then implement data access using our (as-yet undecided) ORM/data access tool.

Are there are any glaring holes in this approach - I haven't worked closely with the MembershipProvider class so may well be missing something. Alternatively, is there an approach that you think will better serve the requirements I described above?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and advice.

Regards, Zac