So i was waiting for the release of objectspaces with vs 2005 but looks like they have dropped it completely. so here is my question and scenario....

i work for a company (just picked up the contract) that has a LOT of forms (printed) i have spent the last 1 month creating a database (50+ tables, one for each form), i have not asked the developer team to create the stored procedures to get/set the data for the databases... so here is the real question, would using a OR mapper like LLBLgen be something that might speed things up greatly for this situation, i mean these forms have not beem changed for the past 5 years and they wont be changed for the next 10 years, so its a one time, convert paper forms to electronic forms scenario, meaning someone will have to create the form/fields (html ) for each one of those paper forms., anyway... i do know (and see) that it creates a lot of code, and access to the code. but does it create the code for the Stored procedures (simple select and update for the table mapping?) as well ? (not just a call to the stored procedure)

Its only about $300 so it might be a good investment if its going to save 120 development hours (about 2 hours per paper form)

What LLBLGen will do is write the C# code for select/update/insert/delete and encapsulate it in an entity class, so instead of fiddling with sql etc. you will use constructs like:

NewClientForm frm = new NewClientForm();
frm.ClientName = "Whatever";
frm.Save();

LLBLGen does not write stored procedures to do this, it uses an internal dynamic query engine . It can also be targeted at various database systems.

Incidentally, it will take your existing database schema and create the code around that. Excluding the time to familiarise yourself with LLBLGen, I suspect you could do this in less than an hour, start to finish.

added to that, because a powerful templated code generator engine is underneath it, you can write templates which generate code for you which form the base for your forms as well, given that most of those forms are often very similar.

The generated framework builds on top of a generic framework which offers full access to your database, and allows you to work with your database in an OO way. So whatever you want to do with the data, you can do via the framework.

zxed wrote:

Its only about $300 so it might be a good investment if its going to save 120 development hours (about 2 hours per paper form)

What hourly rate are you working on...!?

At normal industry billing rates I reckon it only needs to save 3-6 hours to be a good investment...