Unless your system is based strictly on CRUD operations, your DTO's are too granular. Try creating endpoints that embody business processes or artifacts. This approach maps nicely to a business logic layer, and to Eric Evans' "domain-driven design."

For example, let's say you have an endpoint that returns data for an invoice so that it can be displayed on a screen or form to the end user. In a CRUD model, you would need several calls to your endpoints to assemble the necessary information: name, billing address, shipping address, line items. A single DTO from a single endpoint can return all of this information at once.

Unless your system is based strictly on CRUD operations, your DTO's are too granular. Try creating endpoints that embody business processes or artifacts. This approach maps nicely to a business logic layer, and to Eric Evans' "domain-driven design."

For example, let's say you have an endpoint that returns data for an invoice so that it can be displayed on a screen or form to the end user. In a CRUD model, you would need several calls to your endpoints to assemble the necessary information: name, billing address, shipping address, line items. In a business transaction context, a single DTO from a single endpoint can return all of this information at once.