SubSonic and ORM

Looking into other ORMs and Linq I came across subsonic. I watched the video and build a quick little sample application with it. I had a slight problem at first because it kept giving me an error with my MySql.Data reference. I upgraded my DLL and played around with it some more, still no luck. I searched around for a bit before I found the answer, if you use their sonic.exe tool, you need to use their MySql.Data.dll as well.

Once that problem was solve, Subsonic was actually very nice to work with. I used work’s database which is a horrid mess (my boss thinks he knows DBA and won’t listen to reason.) So some of the objects sonic.exe built didn’t work correctly, I simply excluded them from the project and everything was fine. My sample code doesn’t do a whole lot but has taught me several things.

Wellness.UserCollection users = new Select().From<Wellness.User>().ExecuteAsCollection<Wellness.UserCollection>();

foreach (Wellness.User user in users)
{
    Response.Write("<p>");
    Response.Write(user.FirstName +" "+ user.MiddleInitial +" "+ user.LastName);
    Response.Write("<br />");
    Response.Write(user.Email);
    Response.Write("</p>");
}

One thing it did was make me question my own ORM project, I thought about abandoning it for SubSonic (or something like it.) But there are several things I don’t like about SubSonic. One is the perl design of giving me tons of different ways to accomplish the same task. personally I find it to be a mess. (Maybe SubSonic just takes some getting used to.) Peeking inside of the generated objects I was disappointed at the amount of code required for a seemingly simple object. My objects can’t do everything that SubSonic’s can, so maybe it’s a necessary evil.

Something I love about it is their use of generics. I like the way it looks and reads.

I think I’m going to continue my ORM development for now (not that I’ve spend a whole lot of time on it.)  I like my design the object to fit you needs and there is one correct way to do things approach.