Today I recorded a video in which I illustrate some of the database-first functionality available in LLBLGen Pro v3.0. LLBLGen Pro v3.0 also supports model-first functionality, which I hope to illustrate in an upcoming video. LLBLGen Pro v3.0 is currently in beta and is scheduled to RTM some time in May 2010. It supports the following frameworks out of the box, with more scheduled to follow in the coming year: LLBLGen Pro RTL (our own o/r mapper framework), Linq to Sql, NHibernate and Entity Framework (v1 and v4).
The video I linked to below illustrates the creation of an entity model for Entity Framework v4, by reverse engineering the SQL Server 2008 example database 'AdventureWorks'. The following topics (among others) are included in the video:
- Abbreviation support (example: convert 'Qty' into 'Quantity' during name construction)
- Flexible, framework specific settings
- Attribute definitions for various elements (so no requirement for buddy-classes or messing with generated code or templates)
- Retrieval of relational model data from a database
- Reverse engineering of tables into entities, automatically placed in groups
- Auto-creation of inheritance hierarchies
- Refactoring of entity fields into Value Type Definitions (DDD)
- Mapping a Typed view onto a stored procedure resultset
- Creation of a Typed list (definition of a query with a projection) on a set of related entities
- Validation and correction of found inconsistencies and errors
- Generating code using one of the pre-defined presets
- Illustration of the code in vs.net 2010
It also gives a good overview of what it takes with LLBLGen Pro v3.0 to start from a new project, point it to a database, get an entity model, perform tweaks and validation and generate code which is ready to run.
I am no video recording expert so there's no audio and some mouse movements might be a little too quickly. If that's the case, please pause the video. It's rather big (52MB).
Click here to open the HTML page with the video (Flash). Opens in a new window.
LLBLGen Pro v3.0 is currently in beta (available for v2.x customers) and scheduled to be released somewhere in May 2010.