1-7 start/2007-02-28/1

...I think it's dangerously approaching a DAO pattern (a generic DAO, but yet a DAO).

Well, I do think that it should observe a DAO behaviour, since the DAOs used with persistence APIs have all the query facilities we will need to use (query languages, like OQL and the likes). Maybe it's a good idea not to mix these objects with our domain, and let them be a specialized construction to deal with a specialized problem (searches).