Which is the “best” data access framework/approach for C# and .NET?

Question

(EDIT: I made it a community wiki as it is more suited to a collaborative format.)

There are a plethora of ways to access SQL Server and other databases from .NET. All h

Answer 1

Having worked on 20+ different C#/ASP.NET projects I always end up using NHibernate. I often start with a completely different stack - ADO.NET, ActiveRecord, hand rolled wierdness. There are numerous reasons why NHibernate can work in a wide range of situations, but the absolutely stand out for me is the saving in time, especially when linked to code generation. You can change the datamodel, and the entities get rebuilt, but most/all the other code doesn't need to be changed.

MS does have a nasty habit of pushing technologies in this area that parallel existing open source, and then dropping them when they don't take off. Does anyone remember ObjectSpaces?