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Brian Pratt
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Brian Pratt
asked on 03 Dec 2008, 09:30 PM
I was pretty excited to see a Telerik ORM. You guys usually do such a great job of having examples and help.
For some reason, I'm just not getting it. I ran thru the wizard. Created generated code for my table "User"... and now what?
I want a IEnumerable (or similar) list of "User"s that I can bind to something.
Is there a .GetAll() method... something like (just guessing)
List<User> users = Users.GetAll();
or
List<User> users = scope.GetAll<User>().ToList()
Most other ORM's Ive tried (actually wrote a couple myself) seem pretty straightforward in getting data.
Since I seem to be pretty dense, could you provide me with a simple example of how to get a list of "User" objects?
Thanks,
Brian
For some reason, I'm just not getting it. I ran thru the wizard. Created generated code for my table "User"... and now what?
I want a IEnumerable (or similar) list of "User"s that I can bind to something.
Is there a .GetAll() method... something like (just guessing)
List<User> users = Users.GetAll();
or
List<User> users = scope.GetAll<User>().ToList()
Most other ORM's Ive tried (actually wrote a couple myself) seem pretty straightforward in getting data.
Since I seem to be pretty dense, could you provide me with a simple example of how to get a list of "User" objects?
Thanks,
Brian
36 Answers, 1 is accepted
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Brian Pratt
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answered on 04 Dec 2008, 02:35 PM
I found in the help docs (Getting Started > Your First OpenAccess Application > First Steps Example (C#) > Step 2: Retrieving Objects) how to get an enumerator for a list of returned user objects. It involves writing a OQL query (similar to SQL), executing that query, and iterating the returned list.
<note: I still my not be getting the whole picture, and talking it out helps me to understand. I'm not trying to be difficult, it is just natural. I am evaluating ORM/CodeGenerators for my company and need to prove that it saves time, money, code, headaches.>
What seems strange to me is that this is not done by the code generator for you. I am trading one CRUD for another. I have to write create, retrieve, update and delete functions for every table in my database, as well as all the stored procs, get by FK's, etc. How does this save me time and lines of code?
The object persistence, transactions and such sound great. I just seem to be missing something or mis-understanding what this tool is all about.
Thanks,
Brian
<note: I still my not be getting the whole picture, and talking it out helps me to understand. I'm not trying to be difficult, it is just natural. I am evaluating ORM/CodeGenerators for my company and need to prove that it saves time, money, code, headaches.>
What seems strange to me is that this is not done by the code generator for you. I am trading one CRUD for another. I have to write create, retrieve, update and delete functions for every table in my database, as well as all the stored procs, get by FK's, etc. How does this save me time and lines of code?
The object persistence, transactions and such sound great. I just seem to be missing something or mis-understanding what this tool is all about.
Thanks,
Brian
0
Hello Brian Pratt,
If you use LINQ (.NET 3.5) you can simply put a Query like this:
and if you are using the .NET 2.0 you can do the same like:
This code was extracted from the examples we provide. Hope this helps
All the best,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
If you use LINQ (.NET 3.5) you can simply put a Query like this:
| var result = from p in scope.Extent<User>() select p; |
| IList list = result.ToList() |
and if you are using the .NET 2.0 you can do the same like:
| |
| IQueryResult result = objectScope.GetOqlQuery("SELECT * FROM UsersExtent").Execute(); |
| IMovableEnumerator enumerator = result.GetEnumerator(); |
| |
This code was extracted from the examples we provide. Hope this helps
All the best,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
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Brian Pratt
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answered on 04 Dec 2008, 03:47 PM
Thanks for the reply.
The problem with the examples in the help document are that they almost never tell you where the scope came from. They are rarely complete examples.
AND
my scope below does not have a method called scope.Extent()... so this does not compile. This was one of the reasons I did not go the LINQ way, because what I copied from the examples would not compile. Perhaps they were taken out of context, because the snippet was just that, a snippet instead of a stand-alone example.
'Telerik.OpenAccess.IObjectScope' does not contain a definition for 'Extent'
BTW, your code format tool is AWESOME.
The problem with the examples in the help document are that they almost never tell you where the scope came from. They are rarely complete examples.
AND
my scope below does not have a method called scope.Extent()... so this does not compile. This was one of the reasons I did not go the LINQ way, because what I copied from the examples would not compile. Perhaps they were taken out of context, because the snippet was just that, a snippet instead of a stand-alone example.
| using (IObjectScope scope = MyContext.ObjectScope()) |
| { |
| var result = from p in scope.Extent<DB.User>() select p; |
| IList list = result.ToList(); |
| } |
'Telerik.OpenAccess.IObjectScope' does not contain a definition for 'Extent'
BTW, your code format tool is AWESOME.
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Hello Brian Pratt,
You are correct about the documentation. The code snippets are taken out of context. There is some old information that needs to be changed also. We are currently starting to evaluate and prepare list of what to be improved with the documentation, and it is a time-consuming task. We know that better documentation is priceless for our users and we are improving it on a continuous basis. We will address the issues you have reported in the fastest possible manner. We appreciate your cooperation. Do not hesitate to contact us further.
To execute Linq statements as shown in the example you have to add:
using Telerik.OpenAccess.Query;
Best wishes,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
You are correct about the documentation. The code snippets are taken out of context. There is some old information that needs to be changed also. We are currently starting to evaluate and prepare list of what to be improved with the documentation, and it is a time-consuming task. We know that better documentation is priceless for our users and we are improving it on a continuous basis. We will address the issues you have reported in the fastest possible manner. We appreciate your cooperation. Do not hesitate to contact us further.
To execute Linq statements as shown in the example you have to add:
using Telerik.OpenAccess.Query;
Best wishes,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
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Brian Pratt
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answered on 04 Dec 2008, 07:39 PM
Thank you, that did work. Things now seem much simpler with LINQ.
Things I'd like to see from examples:
Thanks for your patience with me in this matter,
Brian
Things I'd like to see from examples:
- They do one thing when possible
- They are complete
- They are organized by task: Select a single, Select All, Where, Order By, Use a StoredProc, Use a View, etc
- They have different levels of complexity: simple, standard, complex
- (see Microsofts 101 LINQ examples page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336746.aspx)
Thanks for your patience with me in this matter,
Brian
0
Hello Brian Pratt,
We are very glad about your suggestions regarding our examples. We do think on the idea to provide something equal to MS 101 LINQ examples, that is a great idea! Please do share with us additional feedback whenever you have the time. Your Telerik points were updated
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
We are very glad about your suggestions regarding our examples. We do think on the idea to provide something equal to MS 101 LINQ examples, that is a great idea! Please do share with us additional feedback whenever you have the time. Your Telerik points were updated
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
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Gene
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answered on 08 Dec 2008, 08:45 PM
I'd like to see some screencast similar to the "Summer of NHibernate" screencasts which can be found here. The screencasts takes the user through a series of steps that many developers follow in doing their day-to-day coding (including refactoring and unit testing). I thought it was very informative and I learned quite a bit about NHibernate from the screencasts.
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MWM
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answered on 08 Dec 2008, 10:49 PM
I'm in the same boat. I'm lost. It does seem that OA was released a bit ahead of its docs and examples.
This word "Extent" means nothing to me, yet it just appears in the examples without explanation in the doc and seems "tacked onto" any table name such as Brian's "Users" table. As Brian pointed out, it seems like using OA is still making me write my own DAL complete with Get(), GetALL(), and the like methods ... for every table in my db.
Something like NHibernate has a Save() and Get(), etc. for basic CRUD operations "out of the box". Perhaps I too am misunderstanding what OA will and will not do.
One of the things OA boasts on is the objectivity of its language. But I immediately see my having to write OQL and involve string references, just like using SQL with the dataadapters, etc. LINQ is type-safe, but didn't Microsoft drop LINQ-to-SQL? Is it wise to get involved with LINQ at this point? If I have to write LINQ queries, can't I just use LINQ? What benefit is there to using OA then?
I like how OA works with its simplistic wizards. I was able to connect and get classes generated and create & bind an OpenAccessDataSource to a grid pretty easily.
But I want to use fields and code-behind too. I've no little idea how to get that done with the limited information I've seen so far.
Telerik, can you please shed some light on a simple example now? I understand the large, complex/involved example projects are in the works. If we could just see something beginner's basic now, it would help a lot! A mere 15-20 lines of code should do it to where one retrieves a record based on a pk into an object (using one of the generated classes), alters the object and persists it back to the db.
Thanks for any assistance!
This word "Extent" means nothing to me, yet it just appears in the examples without explanation in the doc and seems "tacked onto" any table name such as Brian's "Users" table. As Brian pointed out, it seems like using OA is still making me write my own DAL complete with Get(), GetALL(), and the like methods ... for every table in my db.
Something like NHibernate has a Save() and Get(), etc. for basic CRUD operations "out of the box". Perhaps I too am misunderstanding what OA will and will not do.
One of the things OA boasts on is the objectivity of its language. But I immediately see my having to write OQL and involve string references, just like using SQL with the dataadapters, etc. LINQ is type-safe, but didn't Microsoft drop LINQ-to-SQL? Is it wise to get involved with LINQ at this point? If I have to write LINQ queries, can't I just use LINQ? What benefit is there to using OA then?
I like how OA works with its simplistic wizards. I was able to connect and get classes generated and create & bind an OpenAccessDataSource to a grid pretty easily.
But I want to use fields and code-behind too. I've no little idea how to get that done with the limited information I've seen so far.
Telerik, can you please shed some light on a simple example now? I understand the large, complex/involved example projects are in the works. If we could just see something beginner's basic now, it would help a lot! A mere 15-20 lines of code should do it to where one retrieves a record based on a pk into an object (using one of the generated classes), alters the object and persists it back to the db.
Thanks for any assistance!
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Burl
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answered on 09 Dec 2008, 12:55 AM
I just found this 2 part article, it shows some of the basic steps and it's help get my head wrapped around OA.
http://object-relational-mapping.blogspot.com/2007/03/basic-crud-operations-part-12.html
Burl
http://object-relational-mapping.blogspot.com/2007/03/basic-crud-operations-part-12.html
Burl
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Brian Pratt
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answered on 09 Dec 2008, 02:45 PM
MWM: From what I have read, LINQ-TO-SQL is being dropped (one of the reasons we are looking) in favor of the EntLib, but LINQ itself should still be around (LINQ to Objects, LINQ to XML). I have heard that EntLib is not fun to use, so I have not even evaluated it. I agree with you that Extent is an odd term.
In evaluating software for our developers, If I can't see value within about 10 minutes of using the software I usually throw it into the "No" pile (and once it is in the "No" pile, it rarely gets tried again). I gave OpenAccess a little more time than that because of how much respect I have for Telerik, but as of now Im going to not recommend this product for our development team. (I am wondering now if I am looking at the wrong set of products)
What we are looking for (gladly take a subset) in order of importance:
In evaluating software for our developers, If I can't see value within about 10 minutes of using the software I usually throw it into the "No" pile (and once it is in the "No" pile, it rarely gets tried again). I gave OpenAccess a little more time than that because of how much respect I have for Telerik, but as of now Im going to not recommend this product for our development team. (I am wondering now if I am looking at the wrong set of products)
What we are looking for (gladly take a subset) in order of importance:
- Simplified CRUD (two lines of code to get data)
- More complicated generated actions (get by FK, XML retrieval)
- Ease of adoption (means... a developer could integrate it into a demo project in about 15 minutes and be happy with it)
- Large community and company support
- LINQ query support that provides the ease of something like LINQ2SQL (because of the intellisense in VS2008 and the ease)
- Support for SProcs and Views
- Generated SProcs
- Separation of custom logic and generated code
- Fast, easy re-generation when schema changes
- Updated often with new features and fixes (we are an early-adopter shop)
- Transactions
- Possibly some sort of cacheing and database change callback generated (some way to watch database for a change)
- Something like CLINQ (Continuous LINQ) where any sub-queries update as the master data does
Thank you for all your quick responses to my questions, and I will probably revisit this product in the near future.
Brian
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MWM
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answered on 10 Dec 2008, 04:46 AM
Brian,
Have you looked at NHibernate? What about LLBLGen Pro? I understand LL generates quite a bit of stuff. However, from everything I've read, NH might be the better choice; it seems to produce cleaner code.
I'm sitting on the fence right now having ruled-out LL. I am looking at NH and OA. OA only entered my consideration last week when I discovered it being offered while obtaining updates for the ASP.NET AJAX controls. At first, I got very excited that a company I was already working with and for which I was paying for support and other controls was now offering an ORM (which was acquired from Vanatec).
I must admit I'm having difficulty getting started. Howeer, Telerik quickly responded to my inquiry Monday about a simple CRUD example using OA. Here's the link: CRUDSample.zip. Note that you'll have to change the connection string and possibly add access to the database for the login.
What's interesting is that the approach OA appears to be using, an overall single instance "factory" with one re-used "scope" for each transaction, appears to be very similar to how NH does it. What's more is the NH doesn't need to decorate the classes with "Persistent" and the like as does OA. But that's not that important to me.
If going NH, you can use MyGeneration and its free templates. The latest template I saw a week or so ago generates basic CRUD for NH. So you can easily do a GetAll() or Get() based on pk. I've not seen this in OA yet, but if you look at the example, Telerik shows retrieving an entire db table (instead of single record using pk). I thnk you'd have to write a wrapper to then use LINQ or OQL or SQL to simulate what NH is doing.
Still on the fence with these two ORMs though. Telerik's is very tempting because it's included with my subscription and so is its support. NH is open-source so you're dependent on the user network for support and since it's "voluntary", it isn't always as fast as desired. However, NH stemmed from the Java world with a long history as did OA under Vanatec (I did some research on it from 2004).
I think we're going to see frequent updates to OA for a bit until the dust settles. I am disappointed there isn't "out-of-the-box" simplified CRUD however which I feel NH offers. I wonder if Jan reads this if he might be inclined to take a look at NH and improve OA in that regard. OA has NH beaten with VS integration and a GUI, but then there's "ActiveWriter", a free GUI tool for NH. See why I haven't been able to firmly decide on an ORM solution (for over a year now).
From all I've seen from Telerik, they will make things work and work well. I believe they'll take this OA product far and that there's longevity there (they're already giving away a free express version which to me indicates dedication as that will drive a huge number of users into it).
Hope this input helps!
Mark
Have you looked at NHibernate? What about LLBLGen Pro? I understand LL generates quite a bit of stuff. However, from everything I've read, NH might be the better choice; it seems to produce cleaner code.
I'm sitting on the fence right now having ruled-out LL. I am looking at NH and OA. OA only entered my consideration last week when I discovered it being offered while obtaining updates for the ASP.NET AJAX controls. At first, I got very excited that a company I was already working with and for which I was paying for support and other controls was now offering an ORM (which was acquired from Vanatec).
I must admit I'm having difficulty getting started. Howeer, Telerik quickly responded to my inquiry Monday about a simple CRUD example using OA. Here's the link: CRUDSample.zip. Note that you'll have to change the connection string and possibly add access to the database for the login.
What's interesting is that the approach OA appears to be using, an overall single instance "factory" with one re-used "scope" for each transaction, appears to be very similar to how NH does it. What's more is the NH doesn't need to decorate the classes with "Persistent" and the like as does OA. But that's not that important to me.
If going NH, you can use MyGeneration and its free templates. The latest template I saw a week or so ago generates basic CRUD for NH. So you can easily do a GetAll() or Get() based on pk. I've not seen this in OA yet, but if you look at the example, Telerik shows retrieving an entire db table (instead of single record using pk). I thnk you'd have to write a wrapper to then use LINQ or OQL or SQL to simulate what NH is doing.
Still on the fence with these two ORMs though. Telerik's is very tempting because it's included with my subscription and so is its support. NH is open-source so you're dependent on the user network for support and since it's "voluntary", it isn't always as fast as desired. However, NH stemmed from the Java world with a long history as did OA under Vanatec (I did some research on it from 2004).
I think we're going to see frequent updates to OA for a bit until the dust settles. I am disappointed there isn't "out-of-the-box" simplified CRUD however which I feel NH offers. I wonder if Jan reads this if he might be inclined to take a look at NH and improve OA in that regard. OA has NH beaten with VS integration and a GUI, but then there's "ActiveWriter", a free GUI tool for NH. See why I haven't been able to firmly decide on an ORM solution (for over a year now).
From all I've seen from Telerik, they will make things work and work well. I believe they'll take this OA product far and that there's longevity there (they're already giving away a free express version which to me indicates dedication as that will drive a huge number of users into it).
Hope this input helps!
Mark
0
Hi MWM,
Thanks for your detailed description of the actual situation.
OpenAccess is in the market some years and will fulfill your requirements. Because OpenAccess is now part of Telerik the focus did change to more a UI centric view. We are missing some examples during the conversion process. It is taking a great effort to merge a product inside a product line.
The good news are that a lot of people are working at the moment producing examples, videos and knowledge base articles. As I said before this process is taking some time, because the domain is really huge - video samples, KBs, white papers, documentation and samples. All of these will be enhanced and brought to you.
Stay tuned, we do know about missing samples, not working code from documentation, etc. and we are addressing the issue.
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
Thanks for your detailed description of the actual situation.
OpenAccess is in the market some years and will fulfill your requirements. Because OpenAccess is now part of Telerik the focus did change to more a UI centric view. We are missing some examples during the conversion process. It is taking a great effort to merge a product inside a product line.
The good news are that a lot of people are working at the moment producing examples, videos and knowledge base articles. As I said before this process is taking some time, because the domain is really huge - video samples, KBs, white papers, documentation and samples. All of these will be enhanced and brought to you.
Stay tuned, we do know about missing samples, not working code from documentation, etc. and we are addressing the issue.
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
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Gene
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answered on 10 Dec 2008, 06:02 PM
Dimitar you guys are doing a great job! When can we expect some of the documentation, traning to appear (days, weeks, months)? One thing I'm struggling with is how to architect a new solution for OpenAccess. Would you be able to offer any guidance as to how to architect a website with OpenAccess? Many thanks.
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Hi Gene Kula,
We are constantly working on the help materials. in the following weeks you should be able to see more new white papers, Knowledge Base articles and code library items. Blog posts as well. In fact we just released the first one of a series for using OpenAccess with Ado.Net Data Services. Regarding the best possible architecture for web development, it looks like this is a candidate for another white paper. The idea is great! We will prepare a white paper on the topic, but I am unable to give you exact time frame for that right now. As soon as it is available it will be published on the site.
Regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
We are constantly working on the help materials. in the following weeks you should be able to see more new white papers, Knowledge Base articles and code library items. Blog posts as well. In fact we just released the first one of a series for using OpenAccess with Ado.Net Data Services. Regarding the best possible architecture for web development, it looks like this is a candidate for another white paper. The idea is great! We will prepare a white paper on the topic, but I am unable to give you exact time frame for that right now. As soon as it is available it will be published on the site.
Regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Check out Telerik Trainer, the state of the art learning tool for Telerik products.
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SuperXRAY
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answered on 04 May 2009, 04:53 PM
Please bring this topic back. As of 2009.1.423.2, nothing from this thread works. I can't get ToList to work in any scenario.
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Hello SuperXRAY,
We adressed your ToList issue in a support ticket, can you provide us with additional information what else is not working as expected?
Regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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We adressed your ToList issue in a support ticket, can you provide us with additional information what else is not working as expected?
Regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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SuperXRAY
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answered on 06 May 2009, 06:20 AM
Dimitar,
Sorry for leaving my post as it was. I closed the support ticket earlier, as it was a stupid mistake on my part.
Sorry for leaving my post as it was. I closed the support ticket earlier, as it was a stupid mistake on my part.
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Mark H
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answered on 14 May 2009, 12:25 PM
Can I bump this topic please?
New to ORMs (but have written hand-crafted DAL before in classic ASP) - looked at OA, NHibernate, SubSonic, EntitySpaces, LightSpeed and MSEF - all had something to offer but many syuuffer from moribund support/development and/or l;ack of good getting started info and examples. I'm very happy at the DB level and prefer to use/see SQL than Linq or oql but maybe I've just got to be convinced yet.
Mainly it's hard to get up to speed though I take on board the concepts and the claimed time savings etc in the long run. I've ended up here again and pretty much selected OA because I'm guessing that as a relatively mature and developing product and one which offers support I am not going to get totally stuck or end up down a rabbit hole. Also I figure that if I want to use it with the Ajax controls then I can be sure they will work well together.
Have downloaded the Best Practice example but as was pointed out before it still seems to say I have to hand crank the DAL, BO and BLL elements - any examples/papers etc that can address this and make it plainer would be appreciated.
Mark
New to ORMs (but have written hand-crafted DAL before in classic ASP) - looked at OA, NHibernate, SubSonic, EntitySpaces, LightSpeed and MSEF - all had something to offer but many syuuffer from moribund support/development and/or l;ack of good getting started info and examples. I'm very happy at the DB level and prefer to use/see SQL than Linq or oql but maybe I've just got to be convinced yet.
Mainly it's hard to get up to speed though I take on board the concepts and the claimed time savings etc in the long run. I've ended up here again and pretty much selected OA because I'm guessing that as a relatively mature and developing product and one which offers support I am not going to get totally stuck or end up down a rabbit hole. Also I figure that if I want to use it with the Ajax controls then I can be sure they will work well together.
Have downloaded the Best Practice example but as was pointed out before it still seems to say I have to hand crank the DAL, BO and BLL elements - any examples/papers etc that can address this and make it plainer would be appreciated.
Mark
0
Hello Mark H,
we are currently developing and n-tier web application that should provide useful information on good practices in a more complex scenario. The application should be available by the end of the month.
During that time you can have a look at our WCF N-Tier application.
Kind regards,
PetarP
the Telerik team
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we are currently developing and n-tier web application that should provide useful information on good practices in a more complex scenario. The application should be available by the end of the month.
During that time you can have a look at our WCF N-Tier application.
Kind regards,
PetarP
the Telerik team
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WebDevIce9
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answered on 07 Aug 2009, 01:06 AM
Date is August 6th, 2009. This product could be the best ORM in the world. I would not know. I cannot figure out how to get the samples to work. I also cannot get the quickstart to work. I see .dll issues, referencing issues. There are even database setup issues. I really wonder why Telerik does not hire a team that uses vmware to just install, test the samples and them wipe it out and test it again. I'm not doing anything special. I just have sql 2005 (standard I think) and visual studio 2008sp1. The sample apps that install do not even compile! That's without changing anything!
I also understand the concept and am eager to work with Telerik because of their support and product line, but if the thing cannot get off the ground, how will it ever fly? Going to check out the other ORM's and maybe come back. Time is valuable. I do not wish to debug Telerik's sample apps and Quickstart.
I also understand the concept and am eager to work with Telerik because of their support and product line, but if the thing cannot get off the ground, how will it ever fly? Going to check out the other ORM's and maybe come back. Time is valuable. I do not wish to debug Telerik's sample apps and Quickstart.
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Hi WebDevIce9,
We are very sorry to hear that you could not get started with OpenAccess.
Usually our customers get along very quickly with OpenAccess and appreciate the high value they earn, even though there is definitely a learning curve. There will be some new features coming up soon, which makes life much easier for ORM or OpenAccess beginners.
Generally, the best approach for sure is to take the time to look through the videos (for instance the ORM 101 video), demos, application scenarios guidance or and how-to-documentation to understand the basic concepts of ORM and OpenAccess.
Then try out existing examples to check the basic environment like datasource, compiling and build process. Afterwards you can get started easily on your own projects.
Independent from where you start, you will always receive prompt and good support, so you will never be left alone if you got any questions or issues. That is our culture and our customer commitment.
So you will be welcome back any time and just contact us with concrete issues so that we have a chance to help you. Only then you have the chance to learn, if Telerik OpenAccess ORM is the best ORM in the world.
Best wishes,
Peter Brunner
the Telerik team
Instantly find answers to your questions on the new Telerik Support Portal.
Check out the tips for optimizing your support resource searches.
We are very sorry to hear that you could not get started with OpenAccess.
Usually our customers get along very quickly with OpenAccess and appreciate the high value they earn, even though there is definitely a learning curve. There will be some new features coming up soon, which makes life much easier for ORM or OpenAccess beginners.
Generally, the best approach for sure is to take the time to look through the videos (for instance the ORM 101 video), demos, application scenarios guidance or and how-to-documentation to understand the basic concepts of ORM and OpenAccess.
Then try out existing examples to check the basic environment like datasource, compiling and build process. Afterwards you can get started easily on your own projects.
Independent from where you start, you will always receive prompt and good support, so you will never be left alone if you got any questions or issues. That is our culture and our customer commitment.
So you will be welcome back any time and just contact us with concrete issues so that we have a chance to help you. Only then you have the chance to learn, if Telerik OpenAccess ORM is the best ORM in the world.
Best wishes,
Peter Brunner
the Telerik team
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Steven
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answered on 03 Dec 2009, 04:15 PM
Unfortunately, my experiences with getting the Telerik OpenAccess ORM product to work using the Getting Started application and Product Documentation has been an Epic Failure! I even took a shot at getting the product to work (after almost giving up the first time) by making use of Falafel's "OpenAccess-MadeEasy" guide.
I am a 14+ year Senior Web Developer in the industry and have been working with ASP.Net since 2001 (beta). Over the past several years, since 2003, I have made heavy use of Telerik products: RadControls for ASP.Net, RadControls for ASP.Net AJAX and Sitefinity CMS. During this time I have come to expect nothing but the best product documentation, code samples and excellent support to go along with it.
It's very disappointing to have to post this, but I feel that it is healthy to provide you some honest feedback and my perception of the state of this product. So, after seriously evaluating this product (and it's horribly in-accurate documentation) I have no choice but to take the following actions:
I am a 14+ year Senior Web Developer in the industry and have been working with ASP.Net since 2001 (beta). Over the past several years, since 2003, I have made heavy use of Telerik products: RadControls for ASP.Net, RadControls for ASP.Net AJAX and Sitefinity CMS. During this time I have come to expect nothing but the best product documentation, code samples and excellent support to go along with it.
It's very disappointing to have to post this, but I feel that it is healthy to provide you some honest feedback and my perception of the state of this product. So, after seriously evaluating this product (and it's horribly in-accurate documentation) I have no choice but to take the following actions:
- Report to my Development Team and Manager that this product failed the evaluation (we wont even consider OpenAccess as an option)
- Un-install the OpenAccess ORM program from my workstation
- Begin keeping a close eye on the Road Map for Sitefinity 4.x (as I know that you are considering integrating OpenAccess into it)
- Will NOT recommend that any of my peers in the industry consider this as an ORM solution
Please Telerik, do me and all of your customers a huge favor: Make sure this product is fixed and well documented before integrating it with Sitefinity version 4. There is no need to trash a perfectly good CMS with tool that is not even ready for prime time (regardless of if you acquired it vs writing it from scratch, no excuses).
Sincerely,
Steven Land
Senior Web Developer
landsteven@hotmail.com
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Hello Steven,
We welcome all feedback that you guys have for us, I would only try to clarify few things here:
1. The Falafel guide "OpenAccess Made Easy" is undergoing some polishing, videos will be added, and the code samples will be updated.
2. The Getting Started, and OpenAccess Tasks sections of the documentation are constantly improved, and for Q1 2010 release we will do a complete review and restructuring of the rest of the documentation.
3. We are constantly improving the user experience and that will be the focus of the next Q1 2010 release.
By the way Stephen if you had such dramatic problems with the product, you should contacted the support as we are there to help you guys, and possible guide you through all the pitfalls you might encounter on your way. We know this process works good for our customers, as we've done it many times.
As regards to Sitefinity, it is really a good CMS, done by a team of professionals, and so far their opinion is positive regarding their use of OpenAccess ORM. Whatever the issues they encounter, we are solving them asap. Please do share any other suggestions and feedback you might have.
Regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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We welcome all feedback that you guys have for us, I would only try to clarify few things here:
1. The Falafel guide "OpenAccess Made Easy" is undergoing some polishing, videos will be added, and the code samples will be updated.
2. The Getting Started, and OpenAccess Tasks sections of the documentation are constantly improved, and for Q1 2010 release we will do a complete review and restructuring of the rest of the documentation.
3. We are constantly improving the user experience and that will be the focus of the next Q1 2010 release.
By the way Stephen if you had such dramatic problems with the product, you should contacted the support as we are there to help you guys, and possible guide you through all the pitfalls you might encounter on your way. We know this process works good for our customers, as we've done it many times.
As regards to Sitefinity, it is really a good CMS, done by a team of professionals, and so far their opinion is positive regarding their use of OpenAccess ORM. Whatever the issues they encounter, we are solving them asap. Please do share any other suggestions and feedback you might have.
Regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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Steven
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answered on 03 Dec 2009, 06:54 PM
Dimitar, thank you for responding.
Based on your point #2, I will consider downloading and re-evaluating the product in Q1 of 2010 (once there is a new release out). Please do everything in your power to ensure that the Product Documentation jives with the Product (crazy idea, but it works). I know that you guys are better than this and I highly suspect that these issues are due to you acquiring the package from Vanatec.
In response to your statement about my "dramatic problems" with the performance (or lack of) with this product, please consider the following:
Based on your point #2, I will consider downloading and re-evaluating the product in Q1 of 2010 (once there is a new release out). Please do everything in your power to ensure that the Product Documentation jives with the Product (crazy idea, but it works). I know that you guys are better than this and I highly suspect that these issues are due to you acquiring the package from Vanatec.
In response to your statement about my "dramatic problems" with the performance (or lack of) with this product, please consider the following:
- I should not have to utilize Support for a simple product evaluation. Either the product and documentation is in working/demo order... or its NOT
- You misspelled my name here ;)~
- Feel free to look up my Telerik profile, as I make use of the Support Resources (forums and Tickets) when necessary (during real development) and have earned a few Telerik Points along the way.
Have a nice day Dimitar,
Steven
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Hi Steven,
First of all let me apologize about the name.
I just want to add that I' am doing all in my power to change the way the product looks, but you have to understand that it is a enormous task to change the work-flow of a product with more than 7 years of history in terms of documentation, examples, usability. The most correct definition would be that it takes time - after three releases this year I believe we changed a lot, yet even more is still to be addressed. That is why I said that starting with Q1 2010 (and the next few releases), our intention is to change the face of the product. Hopefully then it will be able to serve you well.
Regarding the support, I already saw that you use it only if you have troubles and those are rare cases. Just wanted to stress that it is OK if you request support from us, we are here to help.
Your opinion really matters and I would like to thank you for your feedback and insight.
Sincerely yours,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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First of all let me apologize about the name.
I just want to add that I' am doing all in my power to change the way the product looks, but you have to understand that it is a enormous task to change the work-flow of a product with more than 7 years of history in terms of documentation, examples, usability. The most correct definition would be that it takes time - after three releases this year I believe we changed a lot, yet even more is still to be addressed. That is why I said that starting with Q1 2010 (and the next few releases), our intention is to change the face of the product. Hopefully then it will be able to serve you well.
Regarding the support, I already saw that you use it only if you have troubles and those are rare cases. Just wanted to stress that it is OK if you request support from us, we are here to help.
Your opinion really matters and I would like to thank you for your feedback and insight.
Sincerely yours,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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Michael Josiah
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answered on 12 Jan 2010, 12:29 PM
Just read this thread and I have to side with the masses here. I am a Telerik house through and through. Everything we build is using the tools from Telerik. When I saw OpenAccess it was a no brainer, that it would now be my ORM of choice. To date my experience with OA is more frustrating then anything else. It's not as easy as some of the other ORMS out there. The N-Tier examples with ObjectContainers just goes past my head. I tried PLINQO and the simplicity of it just hit home. Great performance, creates basic CRUD, really easy caching, manager type business object generation and just so much more. Its what LinqToSQL should have been like and more importantly its ease of use is what I want OA to be like. I want to use OA and as I would like to use Telerik for all levels of my development, but this tool its just not 100% there for me. What exactly do you plan for Q1 2010? What should we be looking forward to? Please have a look at PLINQO as an example and see if there are some bits you can learn from their implementation.
Thanks
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Hi Michael Josiah,
First of all I took a look at the PLINQO development, and it is L2S with additional CodeSmith templates. I would not say it is a completely new product, it extends Linq To Sql (from what I saw). So I guess what really made you happy is exactly the Linq To Sql - no doubts here it is a marvelous product and it is a shame that it is obsoleted by Microsoft! Regarding our Q1 release: We are gearing to provide a nice and easy scenario and work-flow for reverse mapping involving a visual designer and enhanced code generation. Also we will develop further our Data Services Wizard that will augment the user experience with support for the upper layers like communication layers: ADS Ria Services, WCF, transporter objects, etc. Please let me know if you need more information in a support thread.
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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First of all I took a look at the PLINQO development, and it is L2S with additional CodeSmith templates. I would not say it is a completely new product, it extends Linq To Sql (from what I saw). So I guess what really made you happy is exactly the Linq To Sql - no doubts here it is a marvelous product and it is a shame that it is obsoleted by Microsoft! Regarding our Q1 release: We are gearing to provide a nice and easy scenario and work-flow for reverse mapping involving a visual designer and enhanced code generation. Also we will develop further our Data Services Wizard that will augment the user experience with support for the upper layers like communication layers: ADS Ria Services, WCF, transporter objects, etc. Please let me know if you need more information in a support thread.
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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WebDevIce9
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answered on 13 Jan 2010, 06:09 PM
Just wanted to chime in.
Dimitar thanks for the update. All the improvements you mentioned is right on target from what I saw when evaluating Open Access.
Yes, the Plinqo uses link to sql and that is being redirected by MIcrosoft tehcnically towards Entity Framework v4.0 (really its just 2.0, but what's in a name?). I think you guys at Telerik could have a great tool. I liked all the things it *should* do, it was just too buggy for me. I will therefore re-evaluate it when q12010 comes out.
There is one thing I'd like to see team Telerik improve. When I contact support (by phone or this these forums) they automatically assume I'm an idiot and just not doing things correctly. That's wrong. Support needs to do a better job of supporting Open Access from the perspective of servicing the customer. This tool is obviously filled with issues and for support to just assume we are doing things wrong is not the way to market the tool.
Dimitar thanks for the update. All the improvements you mentioned is right on target from what I saw when evaluating Open Access.
Yes, the Plinqo uses link to sql and that is being redirected by MIcrosoft tehcnically towards Entity Framework v4.0 (really its just 2.0, but what's in a name?). I think you guys at Telerik could have a great tool. I liked all the things it *should* do, it was just too buggy for me. I will therefore re-evaluate it when q12010 comes out.
There is one thing I'd like to see team Telerik improve. When I contact support (by phone or this these forums) they automatically assume I'm an idiot and just not doing things correctly. That's wrong. Support needs to do a better job of supporting Open Access from the perspective of servicing the customer. This tool is obviously filled with issues and for support to just assume we are doing things wrong is not the way to market the tool.
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Michael Josiah
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answered on 13 Jan 2010, 07:06 PM
Thanks for the response Dimitar and I am really looking forward to q12010. When I referred you to Plinqo I was trying to get you to see the simplicity of it. Using Codesmith to analyse my data schema, which then creates all the base CRUD code in management classes and the entities. Creates a compiled and editable version of the entities, allowing me to easily extend the entities or management classes without having it written over when syncing with my db. Features includes caching, detaching and attaching objects, validation and much more. These features which were outside the original L2S feature sets is just so easy to use and get going. It's that simplicity that makes it such a great tool. I would love that same level of simplicity. I know this is probably your goal anyway but I just wanted to mention it as that's pretty much what is holding me back from using OA. Its really frustrating as I have this obsessive compulsion to use only Telerik stuff in my projects and this is the only part that is stopping that :( .
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Hello guys,
Thanks for the feedback and the sincere opinions.
@ Michael : Yes definitely it is our goal and thanks for mentioning such a flawless implementation.
@ Paul: We don't assume anything like this Paul. As you said the product is full of issues, and we have quite a thorough experience where the main points of 'customer experience' failures are. Some of them might look simple or silly but this is actually the situation. Please accept my apologies if you felt that way it is definitely a misunderstanding.
Sincerely yours,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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Thanks for the feedback and the sincere opinions.
@ Michael : Yes definitely it is our goal and thanks for mentioning such a flawless implementation.
@ Paul: We don't assume anything like this Paul. As you said the product is full of issues, and we have quite a thorough experience where the main points of 'customer experience' failures are. Some of them might look simple or silly but this is actually the situation. Please accept my apologies if you felt that way it is definitely a misunderstanding.
Sincerely yours,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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Warren
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answered on 08 Mar 2010, 03:52 PM
Do you have a eta for Q1 2010? I've been using LLGLgen for the last 3 years and thought it might be time to look at your ORM offering. I've tried following along with 101 video and the quickstart examples but run into compiling issues.
Thanks,
Warren
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Hello Warren,
Later today you should be able to download the correct version of the product (Q1 2010).
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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Later today you should be able to download the correct version of the product (Q1 2010).
Greetings,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
Do you want to have your say when we set our development plans? Do you want to know when a feature you care about is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items.
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WebDevIce9
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answered on 22 Jul 2010, 07:52 PM
Anybody re-evaluate the ORM with the latest version? I prefer to read about your experience since my time was eaten up in 2009.
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Hi WebDevIce9,
We recently put online a video series about the new visual designer.
You can find it here:
http://tv.telerik.com/series/getting-started-with-visual-designer-openaccess-orm
I hope this will help you with your evaluation of Telerik OpenAccess.
Greetings,
Jordan
the Telerik team
We recently put online a video series about the new visual designer.
You can find it here:
http://tv.telerik.com/series/getting-started-with-visual-designer-openaccess-orm
I hope this will help you with your evaluation of Telerik OpenAccess.
Greetings,
Jordan
the Telerik team
Do you want to have your say when we set our development plans?
Do you want to know when a feature you care about is added or when a bug fixed?
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Lars
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answered on 09 Mar 2011, 05:06 PM
Hi all, hi WebDevice9,
I've been so stupid not to search for others having the same problems with OA. Now, almost a year later, I'm still struggling with it and a few weeks ago, I decided to throw away the use of OA.
This all sounds a bit biased, but let me explain why.
With regards to OA, you could divide the past into pre-march-2010 and post-march-2010. Before, Telerik could say "sorry, we need to clean up the table"... But after... They cannot.... And what did Telerik do? They made an even bigger mess... Silently introducing the "Domain Model" approach, which - for 8 long months not documented - is NOT interchangeable with the previous approach...
So, pre-03-2010 - OA was buggy - and post-03-2010, they crippled my development... :-(
.... If only OA is capable of doing all the features Telerik is claiming it does...
The DSW - data services wizard - one day it works, the other day it's sick. I probably did something wrong - I must be a very bad IT specialist... Keeping me in the dark for months about the bug, when one removes table prefixes in the object naming, DSW is going to uhh... stop working...
............. I can go on and on about it....
Regards!!
I've been so stupid not to search for others having the same problems with OA. Now, almost a year later, I'm still struggling with it and a few weeks ago, I decided to throw away the use of OA.
This all sounds a bit biased, but let me explain why.
With regards to OA, you could divide the past into pre-march-2010 and post-march-2010. Before, Telerik could say "sorry, we need to clean up the table"... But after... They cannot.... And what did Telerik do? They made an even bigger mess... Silently introducing the "Domain Model" approach, which - for 8 long months not documented - is NOT interchangeable with the previous approach...
So, pre-03-2010 - OA was buggy - and post-03-2010, they crippled my development... :-(
.... If only OA is capable of doing all the features Telerik is claiming it does...
The DSW - data services wizard - one day it works, the other day it's sick. I probably did something wrong - I must be a very bad IT specialist... Keeping me in the dark for months about the bug, when one removes table prefixes in the object naming, DSW is going to uhh... stop working...
............. I can go on and on about it....
Regards!!
0
Hi Lars,
We are really sorry regarding the trouble our product caused to your development. There is no excuse for that but nevertheless I would like to give out some more information on the problematic areas you touched in your statement:
1.DSW - so far our approach was to look at DSW as a complementary tool that we give out as means of assistance tool but not a part of our core offering (even if it was in our core installer). The good news is that we took a totally different approach and later during Q1 we will introduce our new MEF extensibility system for the visual designer, and DSW will transform into a bunch of addins rewritten specifically for that. By those means you will have the chance to directly post-process what comes out of our visual designer.
2. "Cleaning up the table " - actually Lars we are doing exactly that. Why does it look so messy? Unfortunately for our new customers, we have to deal with vast legacy and lots of backwards compatibility problems to care for. We have to serve not only new users, but those that already invested into the product and are comfortable with a given set of API. So we needed a transition at a low speed with lots of iterations... I must admit that more than obviously we didn't managed to carry out this in a smooth manner, but I think that all ends this year ( until the end of 2011 we are planning to polish and complete the transition to our new set of APIs and features).
3. "NOT interchangeable with the previous approach" - again you are totally right. Here I will only put that as of Q1 2011 we have a converting tool that assists you with transition to the new domain modeling approach. Besides that we've added converters from other ORM frameworks as well (L2S and EF) just in case you want a quick transition. The tool is a bit late, but you know what they say: better late than never.
I would also like to add that we had some major achievements during the period, and the most important ones to be revealed fully exactly in Q1 2011:
- our "code first" or 'fluent api' approach. We believe we have the most advanced and usable API in the market. I would even suggest you try it and give us a
- our free edition that now includes support for commercial MS SQL Server instances (so far only the express edition was supported). So you can use it for commercial applications without having to pay anything. Besides that we have a lot of other free backends supported like PostgreS for example (a really nice database form my perspective).
Again we are sorry for any inconvenience caused by our product.
Kind regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
We are really sorry regarding the trouble our product caused to your development. There is no excuse for that but nevertheless I would like to give out some more information on the problematic areas you touched in your statement:
1.DSW - so far our approach was to look at DSW as a complementary tool that we give out as means of assistance tool but not a part of our core offering (even if it was in our core installer). The good news is that we took a totally different approach and later during Q1 we will introduce our new MEF extensibility system for the visual designer, and DSW will transform into a bunch of addins rewritten specifically for that. By those means you will have the chance to directly post-process what comes out of our visual designer.
2. "Cleaning up the table " - actually Lars we are doing exactly that. Why does it look so messy? Unfortunately for our new customers, we have to deal with vast legacy and lots of backwards compatibility problems to care for. We have to serve not only new users, but those that already invested into the product and are comfortable with a given set of API. So we needed a transition at a low speed with lots of iterations... I must admit that more than obviously we didn't managed to carry out this in a smooth manner, but I think that all ends this year ( until the end of 2011 we are planning to polish and complete the transition to our new set of APIs and features).
3. "NOT interchangeable with the previous approach" - again you are totally right. Here I will only put that as of Q1 2011 we have a converting tool that assists you with transition to the new domain modeling approach. Besides that we've added converters from other ORM frameworks as well (L2S and EF) just in case you want a quick transition. The tool is a bit late, but you know what they say: better late than never.
I would also like to add that we had some major achievements during the period, and the most important ones to be revealed fully exactly in Q1 2011:
- our "code first" or 'fluent api' approach. We believe we have the most advanced and usable API in the market. I would even suggest you try it and give us a
- our free edition that now includes support for commercial MS SQL Server instances (so far only the express edition was supported). So you can use it for commercial applications without having to pay anything. Besides that we have a lot of other free backends supported like PostgreS for example (a really nice database form my perspective).
Again we are sorry for any inconvenience caused by our product.
Kind regards,
Dimitar Kapitanov
the Telerik team
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