Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

hanselman.com

1–10 of 83 posts

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#2
This is so awesome.

Partly as a developer who enjoys open source software, but also in part because decisions like this makes life much easier, when you suggest using open source in some a large corporations, where they have a very conservative approach to open source.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#3
Despite my usual complaints about Microsoft, I really appreciate the direction they've been heading with their adoption of open source for a growing number of their products.

ScottGu, Hanselman et al. really deserve a lot of credit for the big cultural changes they've caused to allow a lot of this.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#4
This makes me even more bullish on Xamarin/Mono. As Miguel de Icaza of Xamarin tweeted this morning after this was announced: "Wow @scottgu announces that Microsoft open sourced the Entity Framework, Mono's Achilles heel"

I believe if you are building mobile clients and need to target more than one platform you should do your UI with the native APIs on each platform, but should use something like Mono to achieve as much code-reuse as possible for the lower layers of your app.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#6

Is Entity used a lot? We looked at using it but it seemed to be inferior to NHibernate (don't remember details, think there was a problem with type error detection and other stuff).

I don't like it, and we don't use it at Fog Creek, but, yes, it's VERY heavily used on piles of projects I know. It's not as efficient or flexible as NHibernate, but it's far easier and vastly better integrated into Visual Studio, making it a bit of a no-brainer for simple persistence needs.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#7
post #6

Is Entity used a lot? We looked at using it but it seemed to be inferior to NHibernate (don't remember details, think there was a problem with type error detection and other stuff).

I don't like it, and we don't use it at Fog Creek, but, yes, it's VERY heavily used on piles of projects I know. It's not as efficient or flexible as NHibernate, but it's far easier and vastly better integrated into Visual Studio, making it a bit of a no-brainer for simple persistence needs.

So, what do you guys use at Fog Creek. I've been discussing with my colleagues some of the micro-ORMs like Dapper, Massive, or PetaPoco as an alternative to EF.

http://code.google.com/p/dapper-dot-net/
https://github.com/robconery/massive
http://www.toptensoftware.com/petapoco/

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#8
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like it, and we don't use it at Fog Creek, but, yes, it's VERY heavily used on piles of projects I know. It's not as efficient or flexible as NHibernate, but it's far easier and vastly better integrated into Visual Studio, making it a bit of a no-brainer for simple persistence needs.

So, what do you guys use at Fog Creek. I've been discussing with my colleagues some of the micro-ORMs like Dapper, Massive, or PetaPoco as an alternative to EF. http://code.google.com/p/dapper-dot-net/ https://github.com/robconery/massive http://www.toptensoftware.com/petapoco/

I don't know what they use at Fog Creek, but I will say that I've been building a lot of things lately in both Massive and PetaPoco, and I've really enjoyed it. I've done several projects in both Linq2SQL and EntityFramework at this point, and they both seem way too 'heavy.' Writing straight sql (or pretty much straight sql) has been a return to simplicity. it's forced me to make sure my queries are efficient, and only return what they need to return.

I do miss using Linq to query the db, but not enough to make me go back. I use EF in my main job, and while it does the job, sometimes I find myself being constrained by the framework. That's not an issue with EF so much as it is an issue with any kind of ORM.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#9
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like it, and we don't use it at Fog Creek, but, yes, it's VERY heavily used on piles of projects I know. It's not as efficient or flexible as NHibernate, but it's far easier and vastly better integrated into Visual Studio, making it a bit of a no-brainer for simple persistence needs.

So, what do you guys use at Fog Creek. I've been discussing with my colleagues some of the micro-ORMs like Dapper, Massive, or PetaPoco as an alternative to EF. http://code.google.com/p/dapper-dot-net/ https://github.com/robconery/massive http://www.toptensoftware.com/petapoco/

Just to give my 2c, EF is not so much an alternative to Dapper/Massive/PetaPoco as an alternative to NHibernate.

Both are "heavy-duty" orms, while those 3 are more lightweight. My personal view is that for writes and maintaining a domain model, NH (or EF, but I prefer NH) is a good option, and when you need performance or just want a light layer to ease the mappings from sql to objects, micro-orms are the best option.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources their Entity Framework ORM

#10
Its hard for me to say this in some ways, but of the bigcos, I'm most bullish on Microsoft. I might actually go stand in line (if there are any) for the Surface tablet and maybe even a Windows Phone 8 device.

They are (finally) making the right moves and doing it in a consistent and open way. Any Microsoft insiders know who is driving all this change? ScottGu? Steven Sinofsky?

Post reply on HN