Roadmap

The DevTools release has been shifted one month ahead - Q1 2012 is scheduled for mid February (instead of mid March as it used to be). For this period of time, we will focus on ease of use when working with large database schemas. We will also further optimize the time needed to build your Data Access Layer by adding some new features while improving the already released functionalities where necessary.

Batch Operations Dialog

A new dialog will be added which will present to you the following capabilities:

• Update many (or all) classes and properties using a configurable batch operation, such as changing class namespaces, changing property types, etc.
• Speeding up the process of making changes in class and property names by presenting them in a data grid.
• Providing a grid-based overview of the Domain Model metadata with the applicable search and sorting functionality, allowing you to always have a good reference for the current state of your model

Fluent Mapping Code Generation

The mix of Code-only and Database-first approaches will become possible even with large database schemas with our new Fluent Mapping Code Generation functionality. You will be able to generate most of the necessary code automatically as it is done with the Visual Designer models. At the same time, since the generated code contains Fluent API declarations, you can benefit from the capabilities this API will be offering for modifying and extending the mapping.

Stored Procedures Improvements

The Stored Procedure Editor is going to be improved - with the Q1 2012 version of OpenAccess ORM you will be able to generate methods for stored procedures returning some rather “exotic” database types, such as the ref cursors in Oracle for example.

Context API Enhancements

Currently the new Context API lacks some functionality offered by the old IObjectsScope API like Flush, Tracking callbacks, etc., allowing you to easily apply changes to the database without finalizing the transaction, get the change history and more. Those discrepancies will be covered so you won’t have to use GetScope() anymore in order to access the methods.

Fetch Strategy as Part of LINQ Statements

Defining a Fetch Strategy is already supported in OpenAccess ORM on context level. With the new release, you will be able to also set it for a specific LINQ query before execution and clear the strategy after it. The Fetch Strategy will become a part of the LINQ statement and no extra code has to be written.