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Databases Programming Software

ORM Goes Open Source 35

Posted by Hemos from the tools-for-use dept.
grd000 writes "I have been using Olero Software's Object Relational Mapping and Code Generation Tool (ORM) for Microsoft .NET for the last year or so with great success. I'm delighted to say that yesterday, the Olero folks decided to release their $495 tool as open source. I'm not sure what prompted the decision. Sluggish sales? In any event, this is a boon for .NET developers. ORM speeds up development by generating a C# or VB-targeted object based on a given database schema. Inserts, updates and deletes can be performed using simple or complex criteria in just a few lines of source code, and with transactional support."
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ORM Goes Open Source More

ORM Goes Open Source

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  • with mono, this will run on Linux right? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xutopia ( 469129 ) on Monday August 30, 2004 @09:06AM (#10108451) Homepage
    right?
    • Did anyone tried this or I will have to do it? :-)

    • Re:with mono, this will run on Linux right? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Skeezix ( 14602 ) <jamin@pubcrawler.org> on Monday August 30, 2004 @10:26AM (#10109005) Homepage
      It appears to use Windows.Forms which isn't really supported on Mono yet. However, Novell has a team working hard on a new Windows.Forms implementation, so it's just a matter of time...

      • Portable.NET (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Burb ( 620144 )
        Portable.NET has a Windows forms implementation - I wonder if that would be a better bet? It strikes me as a little unfair that Mono (fine though it is) gets more publicity and kudos than the dotGNU project. Anyone know why that is?

        • Re:Portable.NET (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Skeezix ( 14602 )
          I think it's probably due to a couple factors. First of all, Mono is generally a more complete and compatible implementation (Windows.Forms aside) of .NET. Secondly, the project has been more vocal and is being lead by Miguel de Icaza @ Novell. Personally I think it's a bit of a shame that Portable.NET exists. I wish those developers would join the Mono effort and move things along faster. But that's just my opinion.

  • It's surprising that they released it as open source. Does anyone have any idea why? Will they continue supporting it? Will the company continue?

    The Olero web site looks professional. I don't see even one word about releasing the code.

    • SourceForge link to news (Score:5, Informative)

      by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Monday August 30, 2004 @09:20AM (#10108534) Homepage

      The only news I can find is on SourceForge: Olero Software is no longer able to continue supporting ORM.NET [sourceforge.net].

    • Looks like it will run under Mono [mono-project.com], since Mono has the required library, ADO.NET [sdtimes.com]: "ORM.NET takes advantage of one of the key features of Microsoft's ActiveX Data Objects .NET (ADO.NET)--its data sets. In ADO.NET, he said, data sets can be used to hold hierarchical data tables, such as a customer, the customer's orders and fulfilled orders. What ORM.NET does is abstract out the data layer, generate a SQL statement, and commit all changes back to the database with a single call, he said."
    • Abject market glut perhaps? Everyone and his brother has some form of ORM solution in various stages of infancy.

      There will be a shakeout at some point. What matters then is market share. They are thinking; "open source gets us lots of market share fast and cheap." Pretty smart of them.

      ORM makes my head hurt. The reason for the proliferation of "solutions" is that the problem is damn hard. Trying to abstract the "relational" model and it's various sundry details into "objects" that have the same fide
      • I remember the inventor of C# dismissing ORM as an overhyped solution in search of a problem. It seems like the .NET programmers don't really see value in an ORM solution. For example if you look at petstore application that MS wrote in .NET it's all recordset based. In fact all the SQL was generated on the client side IIRC.

        The java people are all gung ho about ORM but the MS people don't seem to value it all that highly.

    • It's surprising that they released it as open source

      When I first read this /. artical, I downloaded ORM and tried it out. It appears to me that the classes are dependent on a single DataSet that contains the entire database. Ha, ha, not very useful.

      I'm surprised that they were able to get anyone to pay them for it.

  • what about Hibernate (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zaqattack911 ( 532040 ) on Monday August 30, 2004 @12:07PM (#10109889) Journal
    Anyone know if Hibernate [hibernate.org] is working on something like this?

    Sorta seems like the same thing to me.

  • The Future of ORM.NET (Score:3, Informative)

    by dhclab49 ( 567553 ) on Monday August 30, 2004 @02:20PM (#10111210)
    Here's the text of an email sent out over the weekend to customers of the commercial version, explaining the move:
    ---
    From: Olero Support [mailto:support@olero.com]
    Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 11:33 PM
    To: XXX XXXXX
    Subject: The Future of ORM.NET

    The Future of ORM.NET

    Dear ORM.NET Customers and Supporters,

    Olero Software is no longer able to continue supporting ORM.NET. We apologize for the lack of communication over the last couple of months and any inconveniences this may have caused you.

    We still believe in ORM.NET as a valuable tool and, therefore, have decided to make the source code available to everyone via SourceForge.NET. We hope this will allow current customers the ability to continue to use and make improvements to the tool. It will also allow us -time permitting - to make improvements and fix defects.

    Please submit bug reports via the SourceForge site.
    We will still be actively fixing any bugs reported and supporting paid customers
    We will be working to improve the online documentation.
    If you are interested in development/CVS access to the ORM.NET source tree, please put in a request!
    For the latest version and complete source go to: http://sourceforge.net/projects/orm-net/

    Sincerely,
    Olero Software

  • Maintenance (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alex_tibbles ( 754541 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @07:20AM (#10116682) Journal
    One-time Object Relational Mapping code generation is only useful if you get the data structure right first time and the requirements don't change. This rarely happens, in my experience. Martin Fowler's (of Refactoring, Analysis Patterns fame) employer [thoughtworks.com] offer a consultancy service (I read in one of Fowler's articles [martinfowler.com]) for automatic DB change management, tied in with code changes. The other way to do it is all at runtime and in code, but you need runtime support for class creation etc. (like in CLOS-MOP). This works by having the simplest, most general way of accessing data, but you have to handle all the possibilities at runtime.
    Summary: needs way of keeping generated code in synch with changing DB schema.
    • an example of an ORM for Common Lisp that uses the MOP is elephant [common-lisp.net] (open source, 0.1 release alpha, uses Berkeley DB).
    • ORM.NET supports the ability to change the schema over time. Granted, it generates static code tied to the schema (it doesn't react at runtime to code changes), but that has its own benefits in terms of execution speed, type safety, etc.

      As you maintain your application, you can edit the schema and re-generate the ORM layer.

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