Frans Bouma mentions the release of LLBLGen Pro O/R Mapper v2.6, which includes Full LINQ Support. This is a major accomplishment that took no less than 11 months to implement, and current customers get it free as a minor release :) Wow!
Frans mentions several other enhancements to the LLBLGen Pro O/R Mapper:
- “Full Linq support with our own Linq to LLBLGen Pro provider.
- .NET 3.5 support. With code changes in the runtime so it works better with Linq to Objects and with VS.NET 2008 project templates
- Derived table support. Use any query as source for a join side or as From clause
- Much lower memory consumption during transactions: 90% less memory overhead for temp values during transactions. Temp values are used to be able to roll-back to the start state of the entity graph when a transaction rolls back (PK's roll back, FK's synced with the new PK values roll back etc.)
- Up to 20% less memory usage for entity graphs
- String uniquing. When fetching a lot of redundant string data, the same string instance is now re-used to avoid unnecessary memory consumption. This is done without string interning.
- SqlServer 2008 support, SqlServer CE 3.5 support, CF.NET 3.5 support
- Using SqlServer CE Desktop is now much easier
- Plus... a lot of small, but important changes and enhancements.“
If that isn't enough, Frans menions the following:
“In the next weeks we'll be releasing updated code for our Dynamic Data support and also new code for support for ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria). We'll also publish our Linq to Sql templates on our main site so people who aren't yet a customer can try them out as well. ”
I have played with early bits of the Dynamic Data Support in LLBLGen Pro and was quite impressed how easy it was to use. The support for ADO.NET Data Services is going to be amazing, too, which is something you can't get from LINQ To SQL without coding support for IUpdateable.
And, if you use LINQ To SQL, LLBLGen Pro will have some LINQ To SQL templates. That in itself is not interesting you may think, but the key here is that the LLBLGen Pro Visual Designer is much better than the Visual Studio 2008 LINQ To SQL Designer. The LINQ To SQL Designer does not have a model refresh option when the database schema changes, but LLBLGen Pro does :) Therefore, it is much easier to refresh your model from the database schema and maintain your application if using LINQ To SQL Templates with LLBLGen Pro :)
Learn more about LLBLGen Pro here.