Hear! Hear!

The first beta release of EntityPool 2.0.

New features:

• Support for nullable types
• Support for orderby filters
• Compiled against 2.0 framework
• Added Generic method with lazy-loading interators.
• Added CreateEntity event for custom entity factories

Here are the downloads.

• EntityPool_2.0b.zip (14,07 kb)
• EntityPool.2.0b.Documentation.zip (295,42 kb)

Dear readers,

 I'm working on a new beta release of EntityPool. The previous releases used only framework 1.1 features and that's practically stoneage. This is the first major update since long time ago. Therefore I decided to call it version 2.0b. Here's a small summary of the changes:

• 2.0 Generics support including dynamic iterators for dramatic speed increase when working on large collections (see below).
• Configuration of the connection strings using the new <connectionStrings> settings.
• Configuration of filters through the web.config/app.config instead of hardcoded attributes.
• Additional interfaces and events:
  • IConstructedCallBack - an interface that is called after your entity has been constructed from storage
  • IPersistedCallBack - an interface that is called after your entity has been persisted.
  • IRelationBuilder - allows you to define a builder that is used to construct a relation property
  • ConverterAttribute - allows you to declaratively define a converter that is used to map Database values to Entities and vice versa.
• Strangely enough, there are not that many bugfixes. Maybe the code worked as it should?

As said, you now can specify your query filter in the configuration file instead of using an attribute:

You now specify:

If you've every come across the database pages of codeproject.com, you may have seen a post by me about EntityPool. This library was (at least in my opinion) a very satisfactory solution to the burden of typed datasources and embedded SQL. The library used reflection and ADO.Net to generate sql statements at runtime and simplify the persisting and unpersisting of data object into a database like Sql, MySql, Oracle and Xml files.

The library was used in so many projects I was involved in, that there actually was a suggestion by one of my colleagues to port it to .Net 2.0. Many improvements and tools were suggested, but it all came down to one simple answer from my side: "Why?". The fact of the matter is that there are so many object-relational mapping tools in the open source community, that the continuing existence of EntityPool is hardly feasible.

Nevertheless, the project started out as a learning experience, and for my own benifit I updated the latest sources of the library to the 2.0 framework. Maybe there are some people in the world out there that wish use the code, or see the inner workings. Just drop me a note and perhaps EntityPool is not destined to be nothing more than a memory.