Product Reviews
ORM.NET
The road map for your .NET object development.
ORM.NET is an object-relational mapping product for Visual Studio .NET
users. Rather than starting with an abstract object model (as does, for
example, Visio Enterprise Architect with its ORM capabilities), ORM.NET
assumes that you've already built the relational database you need to
hold your business information. It then uses that database to build an
entire data access layer for your application in C#.
ORM.NET is trivially easy to use. Connect to your database, click the
"Generate Data Layer" button, and compile the results. Then you can start
writing code like this:
DataManager dm = new DataManager(Config.Dsn);
Customers c = dm.NewCustomers("DC Company", "DCCOM");
c.City = "Endicott"; c.Region = "Washington";
dm.CommitAll();
ORM.NET builds the complete set of objects you'll need, and insulates
you from the physical database. In addition to wrapping up all your tables,
it lets you easily call stored procedures with just a thin wrapper. Tables
can be designated as read-only lookup tables, and you can do quite a bit
of customization before embarking on the data layer generation process.
There are a lot of code-generation products for VS .NET these days. ORM.NET
is certainly one of the easiest to use, and for placing a data access
layer on top of a relational database it seems to work quite well. You
can download a 14-day trial from the company's Web site to try it yourself.
About the Author
Mike Gunderloy, MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, is a former MCP columnist and the author of numerous development books.