I'm commencing a fairly hefty project which requires an ORM solution.

Previously I've developed a rather hefty CSLA.net type framework which requires a lot of finger bashing to get useful results.  Unfortunately it's slow and I can't be arsed to maintain it any more.  I've toyed with SubSonic but didn't find it particularly stable or easy to deploy and Iv'e used NetTiers extensively but it's a bit heavy.

Anyone got any opinions on a half decent ORM which actually works properly, is rock solid stable, doesn't cost anything and requires as little coding as possible.  The only key features required are optimistic concurrency built in, strongly typed collections, transaction support, half decent documentation, a custom query interface that doesn't suck and support for SQL Server only.

I've had luck using Gentle.NET with MyGeneration.  It hits all of your requirements and is free.

littleguru wrote:

Mine (Opf3) costs a little bit, but is easy to use and very fast.

I've only started using Subsonic but it seems to be very good.

Hi christhetechie:

It's been a couple of months since your post of ORM.  Which one did you go with and would you care to share any feedback?

I'm in a similar situation and value your opinion.

You're the first person that I have heard of with problems with SubSonic. SubSonic 2.0.1 is a really great tool. What was your configuration like? Did you use the build provider or a class library?

I recently heard of using Subsonic as the DAL under CSLA.net--sounds like the best of both worlds!

SubSonic is great!! I used it when 2.0 was released, need to look into it a bit more - maybe blog a bit about it.  It is very cool, plus it works with .Net 2.0 (Unlike Linq).

Linq is also very cool, but its still in beta and requires .net 3.5 so that might be a non-starter for you.  I do like it, not sure if I would pick Linq to SQL over SubSonic.

If you are targeting for .NET 3.5, as in, for the release version of this. I would use LINQ to SQL.. if there's one thing that other ORM's lack, and because its not really possible.. its compile time expressions against the data structures.. creating expressions in strings isn't very nice, and the opposite is trying to interact OOP objects in SQL like clauses..

I've for some reason stuck with Gentle.NET other than my own utterly simplistic ORM.. not sure why because I find Gentle.NET to have tons of glaringly obvious design flaws, and the documentation is pretty weak..

NHibernate is the one I've used most.  It takes some time to configure, but once its working the lazy loading, cascading, etc. really speed up the development process.  I highly recommend you couple it with ActiveRecord since it will handle a good deal of your fetching and saving needs without having to write extraneous mappings and such.

What about EntitySpaces?

I'm using the trial and so far it looks good.

Any good/bad experiences?

Ubercoder.

Had great success with NHibernate with Fluent NHibernate. The automapping saves tons of time.

Hope this helps,

Lee

littleguru said:

Mine (Opf3) costs a little bit, but is easy to use and very fast.

Opf3 goes open source!

I started to work at Microsoft with July 2009. Due to that change in my personal life I decided to make Opf3 open source. This allows a more flexible development and I'm sure you guys will love that move!