Question: If I want to define a class in a common assembly, to be utilized by both a silverlight application and an asp.net web application or other type of app, can I define the data type in a standard class library or should I use a silverlight class library?

Answer: 
Quick and dirty method to determine if Maven is using desired settings.xml would be invalidate its xml and run some safe maven command that requires settings.xml. 

If it reads **this** settings.xml then Maven reports an error: *"Error reading settings.xml..."*
If you are debugging and wasting time like me, this will give exact details including passwords. :P

```
mvn help:effective-settings -DshowPasswords=true

```