Hi all,

Sorry to ask such a stupid question, but could somebody please let me know the advantage of using Pro over Free?

Free generates Classes and Stored Procedures, which are very easy to use and reference. I know there are obviously more features in Pro, but what advantage would I have in using them?

Would I be able to create my data applications faster and more stable? Are there additional methods which make some processes easier?

Or does it just allow me to have more control over the auto-generated Classes/Stored Procedures?

I really am sorry if this is a very stupid question, but I only recently found this application, it's made my life a lot easier in the short time I've had it, and would like to consider upgrading to Pro if it is worth my while.

Cheers guys 'n gals!

Cyber-Drugs wrote:

Hi all,

Sorry to ask such a stupid question, but could somebody please let me know the advantage of using Pro over Free?

Free generates Classes and Stored Procedures, which are very easy to use and reference. I know there are obviously more features in Pro, but what advantage would I have in using them?

Would I be able to create my data applications faster and more stable? Are there additional methods which make some processes easier?

Or does it just allow me to have more control over the auto-generated Classes/Stored Procedures?

I really am sorry if this is a very stupid question, but I only recently found this application, it's made my life a lot easier in the short time I've had it, and would like to consider upgrading to Pro if it is worth my while. Cheers guys 'n gals!

Well, the free one obviously gives a lot of functionality in the data-access department . The thing is though: it's fixed: there's no flexibility in what you can do with the data other than with the truckload of procs you get generated for you. If you want an additional proc and call that one too, you're back to handcoding everything. Also, if you don't need half of the procs, they're still there.

Another thing is that the free one doesn't allow you to work with entities and entity objects, but just with tables, rows and sets. That can be ok, but .NET is an OO platform, which means that if you want to utilize your data in an OO fashion, the free one doesn't cut it.

The commercial one also offers much more features in querying and optimized query building, the free one doesn't. The commercial one has a state of the art code generation engine, which is template based and task based so you can generate whatever code you want from the same meta-data, the free one is a fixed set of code, if you want to alter the output, you have to dig into the sourcecode of the generator.

The commercial one comes with a lot of features like validation and soon authorization and auditing. It already has for a long time automatically pk/fk syncing, recursive save of graphs of entity objects (think customers + their orders, + the order details ) in one go and only saving the data which is changed, in the right order.

With stored procs and the free one, you can't get that: you have to write that all by hand, which will pollute your application with that plumbing code.

I could go on and on, but I think this should give you a good idea

Back in 2002 when I wrote LLBLGen v1.x (the freebie), I was a stored proc fetisjist: everything should be a stored proc. When I wanted to upgrade it with more flexibility for procs, (e.g. adding your own procs, flexible code gen. etc.) I actually hit the wall of the fixed nature of a proc API: it wouldn't work unless the SQL was generated on the fly, and that automatically results in O/R mapping and not in procs.