Telerik OpenAccess ORM supports VistaDB 4

Telerik is launching an updated Premium Collection today that includes a new release of the Telerik OpenAccess ORM.  This release supports VistaDB 4 as a targeted database.

This is something we have been holding the lid on for a while, but it is great news for the VistaDB community.  We continue to work with industry leaders to ensure our customers have the most options when it comes to how and where they use their databases.

What is OpenAccess ORM?

All Object Relational Modelers (ORM) are built to allow object oriented languages to map their objects to the relational database model.  There is an mismatch (called the Object relational impedance mismatch) between how things work in a relational database, and how we as object oriented programmers view those objects.  ORM tools aim to ease that process by creating mapping layers that hide the complexity of these problems.

An added benefit to modern ORM tools is that they often encapsulate you from the underlying database (mostly).  Many are now also starting to allow for advanced features like the ability to model your application in objects first, and have the database generated from that model.

From the Telerik website:

Telerik OpenAccess is an Enterprise-grade .Net ORM that does the data access plumbing in desktop and web applications. Supporting both forward (model-first) and reverse (schema-first) mapping, the tool offers transparent persistence for your DAL and business objects. OpenAccess ORM provides tight Visual Studio integration and allows you to seamlessly create database independent code. Take full control of the generated code by customizing the tool and leveraging its advanced features for code optimization and caching.

Visit the OpenAccess ORM Features page to read through their complete list of features.  The list is quite large, and includes a lot of features you won’t find in the Entity Framework.

Caching is a good thing

I think possibly the most interesting features to me are around their caching layer technology.  They have some very intelligent cache mechanisms for handling Fetch Plans (reduce round trips to the database for the same information), and the Level 2 distributed cache. 

The Level 2 cache is a distributed cache that resides in memory and is shared across database contexts in the same process.  This cache can significantly reduce trips to the disk to load data that is frequently used.

Disconnected API

The other significant technology (from my standpoint) is the disconnected API. This allows you to work offline with a local data cache.  I am not sure if you could choose to use VistaDB for only the local store, and SQL Server for your backend.  That is something we have often discussed here as a great scenario for applications, but the coding can be quite complex for most users.  Telerik has simplified a lot of heavy lifting for you.

Telerik Reporting and more

And of course you can integrate your OpenAccess ORM application with Telerik reporting for a robust customer reporting application. 

You don’t have to use OpenAccess to use VistaDB with Telerik Reporting.  The reporting engine knows how to work with ADO.NET providers through strongly typed datasets, data adapters, and custom integration.

Telerik Links

The following links are on Telerik’s site. 

• What’s new in OpenAccess ORM
• OpenAccess Supported Databases
• OpenAccess ORM features
• Telerik Reporting Information