Although I love LINQ To SQL, it is beginning to collect dust and other O/R Mappers, like LightSpeed, are giving us not only the Visual Design Experience of LINQ To SQL but also the multi-database support, focus on good design principles and patterns, and the continuous feature enhancements on a regular basis. Hopefully Mindscape doesn't stop now that I have inflated their egos a bit ;)
LightSpeed O/R Mapper Gets Stored Procedure Support
In the latest release of LightSpeed, Mindscape is adding stored procedure support. I really look forward to this as this is one of the few items I really missed in LINQ To SQL. I demonstrated LightSpeed's Stored Procedure Support at the Tampa SQL Saturday Event in my session, SQL Server Data Access Tips & Techniques.
Just as with LINQ To SQL, you can drag and drop your stored procedures from the Server Explorer onto the LightSpeed Visual Design Surface in Visual Studio 2008:
Notice the GetCategory Stored Procedure that now retrieves a Category by CategoryId.
The Stored Procedures gets added as methods to the Unit Of Work as follows ( note this could change upon release ):
using (var uow = UnitOfWork.Create())
{
var categoryOne = uow.GetCategory(1).First();
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}", categoryOne.CategoryName));
}
This is similar to how one uses stored procedures with LINQ To SQL.
Conclusion
I suspect that if Mindscape keeps adding more and more features to LightSpeed at the pace it is doing now, LINQ To SQL will just fade away and the Entity Framework will only be used by developers who don't know better ;)
Also from the Tampa SQL Saturday Event, see the tutorial:
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