Manual DAL & BLL vs. ORM

Question

Which approach is better: 1) to use a third-party ORM system or 2) manually write DAL and BLL code to work wi

Answer 1

Recently I made the decision to use Linq to SQL on a new project, and I really like it. It is lightweight, high-performance, intuitive, and has many gurus at microsoft (and others) that blog about it.

Linq to SQL works by creating a data layer of c# objects from your database. DevExpress XPO works in the opposite direction, creating tables for your C# business objects. The Entity Framework is supposed to work either way. I am a database guy, so the idea of a framework designing the database for me doesn't make much sense, although I can see the attractiveness of that.

My Linq to SQL project is a medium-sized project (hundreds, maybe thousands of users). For smaller projects sometimes I just use SQLCommand and SQLConnection objects, and talk directly to the database, with good results. I have also used SQLDataSource objects as containers for my CRUD, but these seem clunky.

DALs make more sense the larger your project is. If it is a web application, I always use some sort of DAL because they have built-in protections against things like SQL injection attacks, better handling of null values, etc.

I debated whether to use the Entity Framework for my project, since Microsoft says this will be their go-to solution for data access in the future. But EF feels immature to me, and if you search StackOverflow for Entity Framework, you will find several people who are struggling with small, obtuse problems. I suspect version 2 will be much better.

I don't know anything about nHibernate, but there are people out there who love it and would not use anything else.