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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."
right?
The only news I can find is on SourceForge: Olero Software is no longer able to continue supporting ORM.NET.
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
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 fidelity as "normal" objects seems like a fool's errand. I see all this ORM emerging from every conceivable source and think "white elephant." At best the problem is sufficiently difficult that I'm certain most of the "solutions" we've come up with to-date were obsolete the day they were released.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Sorta seems like the same thing to me.
just like Ant/NAnt and JUnit/NUnit, there's also a .NET Hibernate called NHibernate.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nhibernate
As far as I can tell, this isn't a library, but a code generator so being under GPL makes little difference for daily use. Output from GPL software is *not* constrained by the GPL, only changes to the code generator *itself* would have to be given back to the community, not any project that used generated code.
Or has Microsoft etc all done such a good job of convincing people the GPL is evil that you think that using GCC or the GIMP means my code/image is somehow GPLed by magic?
Sig under construction since 1998.
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
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).
Sig under construction since 1998.
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?
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 offer a consultancy service (I read in one of Fowler's articles) 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.
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