I looked at the DataObjects.NET (
http://www.x-tensive.com) website like i always do, and noticed that they have change their licensing model and their product is actually cheaper and very well broken down into
internal, personal, small business and enterprise. After going through the presentations for v3.9, i should say i fell in love with the idea of not having to think about the database side of thing, but to rather concentrate of the business layer and the business rules and interface of the application.
Since the release of v4.0. I wanted comprehensive documentation, examples, benchmarks of DataObjects.NET or some ORM which would not require me to define any database specific details. So you will know that i was also impressed with XPO from Developer Express.
X-tensive.com has now released the new update which contains exactly what i wanted. I still want more examples though, but the example included of a WPF + DO4.0 application was quite interesting. It will be interesting to have as many examples as possible, for example, i would want to know if i can incorporate the WCF to make my application more scalable, how would i effectively do it. My quest is to reduce development time and use a simple, lightning speed ORM which will shadow the develpment team from the databases, but retain the power of persisting (blindly), log, cache, search and utilise the new stuff in the .NET framework. I should say i was amazed with the benchmarks of
DO4.0 performance. I think the future is bright for this ORM.
I realised that a wiki, is being updated regularly on the usage of DO4.0 and a blog (http://tips.x-tensive.com/) has been opened to give tips to developers on good practices in .NET development.
One of my main concerns is support and response to queries. I hope it will improve, maybe it has already since the last time i talked to them.