posted on Monday, February 27, 2006 9:02 PM
by
thomasswilliams
IdeaBlade DevForce
I notice that the latest Australian MSDN Flash from Frank Arrigo mentions IdeaBlade DevForce, a (quite mature) object-relational mapping tool:
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Cut down the time you spend developing data-intensive client/server applications. Get IdeaBlade's DevForce Express, a developer productivity solution for .NET that is fully integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio. DevForce: helps professional developers build, maintain, and operate smart client Internet applications by bridging the infrastructure gap between the Application layer and .NET. The solution is a "must have" for .NET development that will improve your productivity and increase application quality, reduce overall costs, and accelerate time-to-market. |
I have been using the free DevForce Express in my Visual Basic 2005 developments and found it incredibly useful. I have even e-mailed some support-type questions and had them answered very promptly (and with actual help, not boiler-plate answers). And there's a user forum at IdeaBlade-Runner that looks to have a few active participants too (and another question of mine got answered - thanks!)
I have tried one or two ORM tools and appreciated the time they sliced from simple table edit screens. For my current project, I'm still hand-crafting logic in stored procedures for the web-based front end, but for the admin side of things (a Windows Forms app), IdeaBlade is perfect. Two tools that I'd tried earlier (that shall remain nameless) and I was even mostly happy with, stopped active development, but IdeaBlade appeals because it's still improving - the .NET 2.0 version was out very quickly after launch. It also allows you to make changes to your objects and just regenerates the underlying data access stuff, and ties in with databinding too.
It does take some time to get a handle on, but has demos in VB and C# and is worth spending the time upfront for the rewards later.
And no, I'm in no way affiliated with IdeaBlade: I just thought if you were reading this and you hadn't tried an ORM tool, it would be worth a look.
Technorati tags: orm, visual basic, database