"EntitySpaces is an easy-to-use, high-performing .NET Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tool. If your organization is evaluating ORM tools, I would recommend that you add EntitySpaces to your list."   -- Vijay P. Mehta

While this book isn't specifically about EntitySpaces we do get some kinds words from it's author in the section of the book that does takes a look at EntitySpaces.

Author Information

Vijay P. Mehta has been working as a software engineer and architect for the last 12 years. Starting off in the VC++/ATL, MFC, Win32, and VB6 worlds, Vijay later moved on to Java and .Net development. With his current focus on C# and .Net, Vijay holds a number of Microsoft certifications and has written a number of articles on .Net and Microsoft–focused development. Currently working as an Architect for a financial services software company in Indianapolis, Vijay spends the bulk of his time designing and implementing large, cutting-edge software systems.

For more information see Pro LINQ Object Relational Mapping in C# 2008

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

Before we begin we want to let you know that you should uninstall any prior ES2008 beta's including the release candidate before installing the official release. The official release is version number 2008.1.0623.0 (yyyy.major.mmdd.minor) and passes all of our regressions tests. We were also able to sneak in fixes and enhancements such as support for the new "rowversion" data type in Microsoft SQL Server CE which providers support for concurrency checking, and other fixes as well. The installer also now installs two versions of our .CHM based help system. We still ship the full blown help system but we also provide a new scaled down "simple" version which you will find on your menu after installing. This simple version should prove very useful if you are just getting started with EntitySpaces. 

New Features and Bug Fixes

• Support for both MyGeneration and CodeSmith.
• LINQ Support for our SQL Server and SQL Server CE Desktop providers.
  • EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta
  • EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta (Part 2)
• Added "Casting" Support
• Added Subquery Support
  • EntitySpaces 2008 - Dynamic SubQuery Showcase
  • EntitySpaces 2008 Adds Subqueries
• Support for the SQL Server 2005 NEWSEQUENTIALID() Function.
• Support for the new SQL Server 2008 Datatypes.
• Added Query.SelectAllExcept() - Great for excluding large blob type columns when you don't really need them.
• Added PostgreSQL Guid support (see EntitySpaces.Npgsql2Provider.dll below).
• Fixed obj.Query.Where(new esWhereItem(esParenthesis.Close)) adds extra default Conjunction.
       http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/7491.aspx
       http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/7620.aspx
• Added the ability to un-hook a Query from a collection.
       http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/8325.aspx
• Leaving esDataSource.TotalRowCount set to -1 it will cause it to calculate it for you (no need for a second query).
• Better exception handling. All low level database exceptions should bubble up to the application code. No more "Object reference not set" errors.
• The installer also ships full source for the EntitySpaces.MetadataEngine.dll plugins for both Sql Server CE and VistaDB so you can recompile these if you need to use different versions.
• All assemblies have new strong name keys and the source code does not come with the .SNK files, if you need to recompile the source code you will need to generate your own EntitySpaces.snk files.
• Generating code with "Generate Single File" set to false should no longer have any errors.
• Fixed Query.OP() LIKE/NOT LIKE for public use.
• Fixed parameter direction in Oracle delete stored procedures.
• Fixed property settor when INotify and Hierarchical are both checked
  • http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/8951.aspx
• Properties that are not brought back by queries no longer throw exceptions, they simply return null if accessed. This is very nice for our proxies as you no longer have to return all columns for the proxies to work properly.
• Many other minor fixes and enhancements were made.
  

Assemblies

The Standard Assemblies for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5

The Compact Framework Assemblies for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5

There is a special version of the EntitySpaces.Core.dll in the "Web" subfolder that allows for better binding in ASP.NET scenarios when extra columns are brought back by joins and by other means. This should eliminate the need to use LowLevelBind().

Both our .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 EntitySpaces.SqlServerCeProvider.CF.dll's are bound to the 3.5.0.0 version of System.Data.SqlServerCe.dll. If you need to redirect the bindings you can do so, see this post. Both our .NET 3.5 versions of EntitySpaces.SqlClientProvider.dll and EntitySpaces.SqlServerCeProvider.dll (Desktop) have support for LINQ.

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

We've added support for CodeSmith and added many big new features including LINQ Support, subquery support, casting support, SQL 2008 support, NewSequentialID support, PostgreSQL Guid support, and just a ton of enhancements and fixes. We also now have a Microsoft SQL Server CE desktop provider as well as the Compact Framework provider. We didn't get everything done on the roadmap that we wanted to but we are well positioned for the future. We need to save some stuff for the official announcement so this is just a short and sweet post to let you know the official version "2008.1.0623.0".

Below are a few blog posts that speak to some of the new features coming in ES2008. And know for sure, we need you to run with our release candidate this week. So help us if you can.

EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta

EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta (Part 2)

EntitySpaces 2008 "Cast" Support

EntitySpaces 2008 - Dynamic SubQuery Showcase

EntitySpaces 2008 Adds Subqueries

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

We thought we would bring this blog post written by King Wilder to your attention. King Wilder, is an ASP.NET developer who runs and owns a small web hosting company called Gizmo Beach. The article is about an ASP.NET MVC application that King ported to use EntitySpaces as the data access layer, or model. Here's a brief snippet from the article.

ENTITY SPACES

Ok a brief word about Entity Spaces.  It is a really cool ORM tool but much more than that.  It reads your database and builds entity classes.  Now you might say that there are many tools that do that like NHibernate, SubSonic, etc., and you would be correct.  EntitySpaces actually costs money where SubSonic is free.  But I was using SubSonic before I trialed Entity Spaces.  After about a half a day playing with it, I purchased it and I'm going on my second year (2008) using it and I couldn't be happier.  Go to their web site to find out more.  But this article isn't about EntitySpaces, it's about building an ASP.NET MVC application without using Linq.

See the rest of the blog post HERE ...

The EntitySpaces 2008 Release Candidate is available now. Both the Developer and Trial Versions are available. Not all of the items on the roadmap are going to make the 1st ES2008 release. Those items listed on the roadmap not shown in red will be included in a follow on maintenance release. We are probably looking at less than two weeks before the official release so we encourage you to upgrade and try it out to make sure that there are no fixes that you need.

Here is a short list of fixes and enhancements included in the Release Candidate:

• esDataSource will automatically fetch the TotalRowCount if you do not set it
• Added LINQ support too (optional template option)
• Added source code for VistaDB and SqlCe MetadataEngine plugins to installer
• Fixed some Casting issues
• Fixed DatePart sub-operator for Oracle
• Fixed CodeSmith generation error for SqlCe
• Fixed CodeSmith generating un-compileable code for Oracle sequences
• Fixed ordering issue with paging for Oracle
• PostgreSQL Guid Support

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net