Retina.NET 2.0 has been a long time coming, but Andres has released the next version of this O/R Mapper with the following key features:
- Retina .NET compiled for .NET 2.0 & Visual Studio 2008.
- Removed NullableType & NUnit dependency.
- Added Generic methods support for ObjectContext high level API.
- Added VistaDB 3.0 support.
- Added Compact Sql support.
- Added Generic child collections & sets.
- Added LCG support (DynamicMethod) to avoid reflection.
- Updated Castle Dynamic proxy to v2.0.
- Created a new DSL designer for VS2008 (preview 2).
- Added support for entity fields validation attributes (based on EViL)
If you check out the forum discussions, Andres briefly mentions some of the notable features of the Retina .NET O/R Mapper:
“... support to all kinds of relationships (composition, aggregation), support for all kinds of relationship multiplicity (1-1, 1-n, n-m), support for all three types of inheritance mapping, supports all major database engines, supports all kinds of primary keys (autogenerated in the db, compound, etc), supports a RQL (Retina Query Language) and Criteria objects for queries, supports lazy loading of child collections and entities (using dynamic proxies), paging and sorting in results, support for stored procedures, very easy to use with no complex XML config files, and many more.
Some unique, or first seen in, Retina.NET features:
- Supports the creation of entity "triggers" and "constraints".
- Extensible data type system.
- Support for data binding (including navegability of child entities and collections).
- Support for autogenerated edit forms (Web or WinForms).
- Very easy to implement a new database support.”
LINQ support is apparently being worked on as we speak.
So many O/R Mappers for the .NET Framework that surely one of them will meet your needs :)
Check out Retina .NET here.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden