Just what is a "Model" supposed to be in CI?

[eluser]sl3dg3hamm3r[/eluser]
I often observed here that the term model is missunderstood with a simple DAL (data access layer). Also what Dam1an mentioned, I completely disagree. The classical MVC-Pattern states to keep the controller as light and slim as possible. In the controller, developers also often use Command, but in terms of CI, I never tried to do anything that way. For small, straight-forward projects it might become too complex I'd say, benefits are too little.

Nobody keeps you from using the Model-Layer for your business-objects, which could be completely unaware of the persistence layer. If you use an ORM, or self written Data Access Objects / Data Transfer Objects / whatever is up to you. If the business-cases become really complex, I highly recommend to go that way. I just recently finished a project with CI, which had some complex data assembling going on. I solved that with complex nested associative arrays and regretted it later on that I didn't do it the proper OOP-way with some ORM or DAOs. For me, this goes everything into the model.