JimFoye wrote:
Ha! They now have an ORM product!
http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/XPO/
That is a product which exists for a while, Jim
Check this out, though (from the "how it works" page):
Although, additional functionalities introduced by XPO such as optimistic concurrency, persistent objects class inheritance, deferred record deletion and support for simple many-to-many relationships do require changes to the database structure by adding auxiliary database structure elements. In such an instance, you will have to take additional steps to implement these features, explanations of which are beyond the scope of this article.
Frans, I've noticed that a lot of ORM products require making changes to the underlying db. I absolutely LOVE the fact that LLBLGenPro does not muck with my database!!
I also don't understand why people are so willing to let some app modify their schema's as it gives problems along the way when you're in production and have to migrate existing data.
The reason these tools do that is based on the philosophy that you start with your class model, and generate a relational model from that class model as the class model is the core of the universe. (according to that philosophy).
I also don't understand why you need extra elements in your model for inheritance for example.