ORM Goes Open Source

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."

Comments

SourceForge link to news

[Futurepower(R)]

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

Will it run with Mono? Looks like yes.

[Futurepower(R)]

Looks like it will run under Mono, since Mono has the required library, ADO.NET: "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."

Yeah, it's NHibernate

[shodson]

just like Ant/NAnt and JUnit/NUnit, there's also a .NET Hibernate called NHibernate.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nhibernate

The Future of ORM.NET

[dhclab49]

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

Re:Too bad

[Godeke]

True, however it also means that I can't design a better front end for it - I'm stuck with whatever is released along with the library.

Huh? You can perfectly well improve the front end as long as you don't distribute it while failing to distribute your changes. That was my reason for pointing out it was a code generator. I can improve the code generator, use the code that it writes and all within the bounds of the GPL.

The only thing I can't do is improve the code generator itself and then try to distribute the improved version without the source to those improvements.

I don't see that as being a blockade in any way to useability of this. I can do far *more* than I can with a commercial product (such improve the front end for my personal use).