It’s been a full week since we published a poll asking users to tell us which ORM for .NET they think is best. Although there were some late entries into the field, the the winner with 37.9% of the votes is Microsoft’s own Entity Framework. Perhaps a more interesting statistic though is that 56% of the votes were against Microsoft’s products. Here are the complete results which you are welcome to question, bash, and generally discredit in the comment links.
Note that these scores include votes originally cast as “Other”. Remaining “Other” votes received only 1 vote each and are counted together.
Hey great to see you include Automapper, i suggested it
. Going to plan a detailed learning for Nhibernate course from pluralsight now. Never got a chance to try my hand on it in pass though. Thanks.
Is it possible to know how many the poll have in total ?
If you go to the original article and click View Results you can see the count.
However the poll remains open, so the numbers shown above are no longer correct.
I also wonder if EF gets a lot of votes because the article comes up if an EF user is searching for alternatives…
Is it possible to know how many votes the poll have in total ?
RavenDB and AutoMapper are ORMs? Ok.
I am as surprised as you, Automapper and RavenDB????
Nothing surprising here
. I’ve been using telerik’s open access for more than three years and I’m very impressed with its speed and flexibility. There is a complete comparison for Entity Framework and Open Access on the telerik website: http://www.telerik.com/products/orm/getting-started/openaccess-vs-entity-framework.aspx
@clement, there was 934 votes total. @Jason S, these were submitted by users under the “Other” option. It is interesting that some developers might see RavenDB and AutoMapper as ORMs.
Nice compilation, with somewhat predictable results.
I too was dumbfounded to see RavenDB & AutoMapper classified as ORMs. However if one takes a step back and drifts away from the traditional definition of ORM, some light is visible.
Purely from the responsibility standpoint, what RavenDB does (or for that matter most of the document based NoSQL databases) is that it takes away the complexity of ‘relationships’ and projects entities as objects. Once can therefore avoid a DAL altogether or have a thinner version with RavenDB … with a clear limitation of being stuck to a database (RavenDB).
Next, even AutoMapper can bee seen in the same light, except that it does not connect to a physical database. Once can at least map objects to other set of objects.
So I say, they are ORMs if one is ready to shred a restricted and traditional definitions.
Note, RavenDB does not “take the pain out” of relationships, it makes you actually account for relationships in your domain design. ORMs lie to you and make you think you can pretend that relationships are just a side effect. RavenDB is honest with you and makes you design proper transactional boundaries for your model.
AutoMapper? Really? This must have been a VERY loose definition of ORM. >.>
Shame to see that Simple.Data didn’t make the list. How many people answered the poll?
You’re right, it’s a shame Simple.Data did not make it, for it’s one of the very best out there for .NET 4.0
Just the fact that Automapper is on the list invalidates this who thing.
This just shows the ignorance of us all. These at the top are not best by far. Sad that they have the image of being best.
Evarlast, in your opinion what are the best? and why? I ask not for create a discussion, I ask for learn I want to learn an ORM and I would like to use the best.
thanks in advance.
Which ones are the best then?
EntitySpaces is my personal favorite. Yes, it’s not free, but neither is EF if you value your time.
@evarlast i completely agree! EF is a half ORM, misses key functionality, second level cache… etc
SubSonic is missing too.
I am using subsonic for almost 2/3 years now., fantastic stuff.
Very predictable…given plural sight’s audience…mostly followers of Microsoft prescriptions…two years ago it would have been liq-to-sql at the very top…
This was like doing a political poll in San Francisco…you know what the results would be
Did you notice that the majority voted against Microsoft tools?
Can we have the result shown in numbers?
The numbers change daily, although I basically consider the survey over.
I doubt everyone voted for which ORM they think is *best* because very few people have done comprehensive enough comparisons to even have a valid opinion on the matter. I’m pretty sure the voting here reflects simply what people actually use, or intend to use. EF is clearly Microsoft’s horse in the race, but let’s face it, it’s only good enough for the tasks Microsoft thinks are important and it’s not their bread and butter. Anyone who really has to suffer with an ORM owes it to themselves to do a bit more digging to understand how EF the best ORM out there by far. My personal bias is with EntitySpaces but hey I favor productivity over conformity, so make of that what you will. Also, it’s nice to have a ORM/data access layer that Microsoft suddenly deprecates in favor of the new cool thing just to drive sales of Visual Studio.
Ugh…. edit: Anyone who really has to suffer with an ORM owes it to themselves to do a bit more digging to understand how EF is NOT the best ORM out there by far.