OpenAccess ORM

Telerik OpenAccess Free Edition (previously known as OpenAccess Express) is a free to use version of Telerik OpenAccess, a tool which allows developers to seamlessly create database-independent code by simplifying and minimizing time-consuming CRUD operations.

The community-driven Free Edition uses the same powerful data engine and provides much of the functionality of the commercial version.

Why Choose

Powerful Visual Designer

Create a working project in minutes with the Visual Designer for OpenAccess ORM. Build your domain model and take full control of the mapping process with the help of an advanced visual editor.

Full Round-trip Mapping

With the Visual Designer for OpenAccess ORM you don’t have to choose whether to forward- or reverse-map your project in advance. Thanks to the full round-trip mapping support you are able to employ both approaches at any moment during design time.

Model-first and Schema-first Mapping

OpenAccess ORM can start from existing legacy databases, detect your data model, create object models, and even let you edit the object model. Alternatively, you can just start from your model of persistent classes and push those to the database. OpenAccess supports rich variety of mappings for collections and class hierarchies.

Extensive LINQ Support

Use the extensive LINQ support that OpenAccess provides to work with your data in a unified way. You can also use any of the two other options – standard OQL and direct SQL. Regardless of the language, we provide you with all the means to easily query your data. Read more...

Fluent mapping API

Fully configure the OpenAccess ORM model mapping by using only code and without the use of attributes or XML definitions.

Full Database Mapping

OpenAccess can map to all three database objects – Views, Stored Procedures and Tables. This means you can significantly improve your applications’ performance and security by fully utilizing the resources of your database server.

Silverlight Integration

Simple, yet powerful integration with Silverlight through supporting plain WCF services, Data Services, Ria Services technologies.

Testability

All classes enhanced by Telerik's .Net ORM are still normal CLR objects, and as such can be easily  tested by state of the art unit tests. Moreover, SQL code can be traced by writing it to the console, in a text file or to the .NET tracing framework. Performance counters show you the state of your running application, website or application server.

Transparent Persistence

All classes in Telerik's .Net ORM are persistent ignorant and work independently. User experience is enhanced through strong Visual Studio integration and interactive wizards. The code is free of data access code “plumbing” and is enhanced transparently after compilation. Read more...

Native .NET API and ZERO Reflection

OpenAccess uses standard .NET conventions and idioms. Enjoy inheritance, polymorphism, composition and the .NET collections framework, including generic collections. What’s more, OpenAccess does not use .NET reflection and can be used even in Medium Trust environments.

Visual Studio 2010 Integration

Leverage a familiar environment. The powerful wizards will allow you to set up a persistent model with just a few clicks. Use datasources for all platforms to do most of the work codelessly. The free version of OpenAccess is fully integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and supports all IL compatible languages. OpenAccess supports full source code control in TFS or any other SCM system.

Multi-tier Support

Easily send around persistent data directly or with the OpenAccess Object Container. OpenAccess takes care of change tracking / lazy loading and all the necessary optimistic concurrency information. Read more

SQL Optimization

Telerik OpenAccess lets you control the generation and use of SQL code. Using the Fetch Plans you can optimally fetch the initial result of your query and to navigate to a data that is not yet in memory. Performance can be further enhanced through the use of Stored Procedures for read and write operations , which let you reuse existing SQL code to return queried data and to execute insert, update, and delete operations in the data source. Read more

Runtime Changes

Using a unique functionality of OpenAccess you can make runtime changes to your applications object model or database schema without the need to recompile. This feature is especially valuable for applications which allow the users to customize its structure, e.g. CRMs or CMSs. Read more...

Support for Medium Trust Environments

OpenAccess offers support for medium-trust code security levels. This means you will be able to seamlessly integrate it in ASP.NET hosting environments. Read more

Distributed Systems Support

In the emerging mobile and Web 2.5 world, your .NET application needs to support all kinds of disconnected scenarios. Anywhere, anytime. To work with portions of your data in a disconnected mode, OpenAccess offers the object container. It's light, compact and easy-to-use.

Build-time Bytecode Enhancement

No source code generation, easy to understand persistent classes, no mistakes can be made to break lazy loading or change tracking.

Database-independent Code

Enjoy true portability for your applications. OpenAccess ORM supports most of the commercial databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL.

OpenAccess ORM Editions Comparison

Database OpenAccess ORM
Commercial Edition		 OpenAccess ORM
Free Edition
Close Your inquires are handled by the people who built the products, which guarantees quick and to-the-point solutions.
Technical Support
Yes Not Supported
Close Source code is available with the purchase of Telerik OpenAccess ORM Developer License with Subscription, Telerik Premium Collection or Telerik Ultimate Collection. Find out more.
Source Code (see pop-up note)
 Yes Not Supported
Close The OpenAccess ORM Visual Studio Integration is designed to provide maximum guidance to developers for creating and maintaining their OpenAccess ORM applications. The OpenAccess ORM Visual Studio Integration provides a transparent persistence API for your database applications.
Visual Studio Integration
Visual Studio
2005, 2008, 2010		 Visual Studio
2010 only
Close Many developers view their code as their model. They just want to write some classes and without touching a designer or a piece of XML to be able to set up those classes for use with OpenAccess ORM. For those “Code Only” developers we provide a Fluent Mapping API (Beta) that will help them achieve just that.
Fluent API
Yes Yes
Close A specialized visual editor that visualizes the mapped classes and their relationships allowing you to interact with them with simple point-and-click actions. The designer also offers a contextual menu for the most used operations; zoom in/out functionality, export to image and more.
DSL Designer
Yes Yes
Close With the Visual Designer for OpenAccess ORM you don’t have to choose whether to forward- or reverse-map your project in advance. Thanks to the Round-trip Mapping functionality you are able to employ both approaches at any moment during design time.
Forward and reverse (round-trip) mapping
Yes Yes
Close The explorer shows the conceptual layer of the model, or to put it simply the classes that will be generated. It contains the same information that is in the designer but in a hierarchical order. You can perform basic modifications of their properties and operations through a standard properties window.
Entity Diagram Explorer
Yes Yes
Close This dialog will show the difference between the database content and the relational layer of the actual model in terms of what is still missing, should be removed or modified in the model. From there you will be able to insert unmapped tables, views or stored procedures into your domain model. It uses a unique technique that can show all the details (differences, etc) in the compared models.
‘Update From Database Model’ Wizard
Yes Yes
Close This panel shows the relational layer from the database in a hierarchical order. In it you are able to specify which elements should be mapped to or removed from the conceptual part of the domain model. It also supports drag and drop mapping.
Schema Explorer
Yes Yes
Close The editor lets you specify the class and association mappings required for the runtime. The tool also allows you to configure inheritance and stored procedures for CUD operations for the classes updates.
Mapping Details Editor
Yes Yes
Close Convenient toolbox items that allow basic drag and drop mapping, table relationship and inheritance setting as well as inserting comments.
Toolbox Items
Yes Yes
Close This unique feature helps you validate your model once you have finished working with it and eliminate common mistakes like missing primary keys.
Validation Rules
Yes Yes
Close The Telerik Data Services Wizard is a tool that will automatically create the C# or VB code and necessary project files for using OpenAccess entities with the following services, saving the developer time and eliminating syntax errors and bugs:
  • Data Services for .NET 3.5 SP1 Version 1 (Astoria)
  • Data Services for .NET 3.5 SP1 Version 2 (Astoria)
  • WCF EndPoints Service
  • REST Collection WCF Services
  • ATOM Publishing Protocol WCF Service
Telerik Data Services Wizard
Yes Yes
Close The wizard enables the user to generate a simple Silverlight application that consumes CRUD operations for selected entities.
Auto-generate Silverlight Application
Yes Yes
Close The Telerik Software Development Kit (SDK) for Telerik OpenAccess is an easy to use resource browser for all things OpenAccess. It includes demos and relevant information for developers to get started and quickly integrate Telerik OpenAccess ORM in their applications. The OpenAccess SDK is intended for browsing the code samples offline, so it should be downloaded and installed separately from the Telerik ORM product.
Software Development Kit
Yes Yes
Close Telerik OpenAccess ORM provides seemless integration with:
  • Telerik Reporting
  • RIA Services
  • ASP.NET Ajax and ASP.NET MVC
  • Silverlight and ADO.NET Data Services
Integration Capabilities
Yes Yes
Close OpenAccess ORM provides for declarative coupling of Object Model and Activities through Fetch Plans.
Fetch Plans
Yes Yes
Close OpenAccess provides a cache which can be shared by many database access instances (object scopes) in process. This is useful in situations where a lot of data is shared and commonly asked for. A typical example is a web server where much of the data is stable, sharable and commonly used.
Level 2 Distributed Cache
Yes Not Supported
Close Telerik OpenAccess ORM provides developers with a unique way to access their data without using reflection. The tool employs a technique called Enhancement, which augments the code that the compiler generates, giving the application the needed management, lazy loading and change tracking capabilities. This approach eliminates the need to use reflection, which guarantees speedy access to your data. The OpenAccess API has to be used to access the artificial fields because they are not showing up in the classes directly.
Generic data access
Yes Yes
Close With OpenAccess ORM you got no limits, you can use the best of all query language worlds:
  • LINQ
  • OQL
  • SQL
Query Languages
Yes Yes
Close With Telerik OpenAccess ORM you can make runtime changes to an applications’ object model or database schema without recompilation of the application.
Runtime schema changes
Yes Yes
Close Schema Change API allows you to change your database schema during runtime. While Artificial Fields also use the Schema Change API to keep the object model and database schema in synch, the Schema Change API can be used directly by an application to only change the schema, e.g. to support database migration from older versions.
Schema Change API
Yes Yes
Close Artificial fields are fields that extend the structure of a persistent class by adding new persistent fields during runtime. These new fields are described in XML configuration entries. They are accessible via the Generic Metadata Access which is based on the System.ComponentModel API and adds OpenAccess specific functionality.
Artificial Fields
Yes Not Supported
Close Artificial types are types that are not present in the model itself but are defined during runtime. These new persistent types are described in XML configuration entries.
Artificial Types
Yes Not Supported
Close OpenAccess' unique ObjectContainer API concept has been the first ORM feature supporting disconnected data scenarios. Whether you’re thinking of mobile devices, web applications or replications - you need disconnected data management you can count on. To work with portions of your data in a disconnected mode, just take them with you. OpenAccess ORM keeps them transactionally saved and uses little network bandwidth by only exchanging the minimum change set. So it tracks which objects have been changed or are new.
Disconnected API
Yes Yes
Close Modifications to values of the persistent fields are automatically tracked. You don’t need to notify the OpenAccess runtime system that an instance is to be written. When modifications are detected, only the necessary columns are included in the resulting SQL statements. All referenced persistent objects will be handled as well, and only complete object graphs are stored – no instance is left behind.
Automatic Change Tracking
Yes Yes
Close You can run OpenAccess enabled applications under medium-trust security levels. A common example is an ASP.NET application that runs in a hosted environment. Typically, these types of applications require only enough permissions to run under medium trust. Depending on the Telerik OpenAccess ORM features that your application uses, you may need to grant additional permissions beyond those granted by a default partial-trust policy.
Support for Medium Trust Environments
Yes Yes
Close OpenAccess uses lazy loading where your application objects are filled with the data upon access. Not all fields will be filled immediately, so collection or picture fields can be deferred in their population. This has the advantage of saving memory and network bandwidth while preserving easy access – when the field’s content is needed, the data is fetched transparently from the database server. Of course, you can decide which fields are to be fetched when, and OpenAccess provides sensible defaults.
Lazy Loading
Yes Yes
Close OpenAccess allows developers to create new or reuse existing Stored Procedures, and to follow the widely adopted pattern of db logic encapsulation inside the database. Under higher security requirements the stored procedures can be used for all insert, update and delete operations to inject additional checks in the database server.
Stored Procedures
Yes Yes
Close With Telerik OpenAccess ORM you can reverse map database views to classes the same way you do with regular tables. And that is not all, the data exposed by the views can be even modified and stored back to the database.
Data Base Views
Yes Yes
Close OpenAccess supports both optimistic and pessimistic concurrency control. Both approaches can be mixed during runtime. Additionally it is possible to automatically obtain a pessimistic lock upon the first modifying access in an otherwise optimistic transaction.
Concurrency Mechanisms
Yes Yes
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Supported Databases

Supported Databases

 Commercial Edition Free Edition
Microsoft SQL Azure Yes Not Supported
Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005/2008 Yes Yes
Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Express Yes Yes
Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5, 4.x Yes Yes
MySQL 5.x Yes Yes
Firebird Server 2.x Yes Yes
Advantage Database Server 9.1, 10.1 Yes Not Supported
Sybase SQL Anywhere Server 11.x, 12.x Yes Not Supported
Oracle Server 9.2, 10.x, 11.x Yes Not Supported
Oracle Database 10g, 11g Express Edition Yes Yes
VistaDB Yes Not Supported
SQLite Yes Yes
PostgreSQL 8.4+ Yes Yes
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