Telerik OpenAccess ORM Q2 2012 is already live so hurry up and check all the benefits of upgrading to it on our What’s New page! 

One of the most interesting additions to this release is the Add OpenAccess Service wizard (in short AOS wizard), a great time-saver when you want to expose your data to other tiers using various kinds of services. After implementing the generation of WCF Data Services 5 there, we would like to share with you our future plans for this wizard – Web API support!

Goals

As many of you know Microsoft recently published a release candidate version of the new WebAPI with the MVC...

In a previous blog I showed how to customize Telerik OpenAccess ORM data mappings using custom TypeConverters.  In particular we looked at storing, and querying, an enum by its name rather than its int value.  In this example, I will show how to get OpenAccess to serialize a class to xml, and store it in the database.  In the end you will have a reusable TypeConverter you can use to store any class as XML using OpenAccess! :)

Creating the Type Converter

The first thing we need to do is create the type converter.  To do that, simply grab the basic skeleton I displayed...

Before Q3 2011 was live we have introduced you one of the major new functionalities you can find in the release – the new Stored Procedure Editor. It is the tool that allows us now to present our stored procedure support as feature complete.

Along with the visual interface the Editor is offering, we have enhanced the functionality that was available in previous OpenAccess ORM versions generating automatically methods in the OpenAccessContext that are calling stored procedures. The old version of this code generation used to produce methods such as this one:

In past releases, we included an example in our SDK that showed customers how to work with Dynamic Data projects when using OpenAccess ORM.  The process was not as straightforward as we would have liked, but it worked.  In this release we are excited to announce that we have greatly simplified this process by adding wizards, and a new provider, allowing OpenAccess ORM to work directly with .Net 4.0 Dynamic Data Web Applications, and Web Sites.

Getting Started

To use this new functionality, the first thing you need to do is build a Telerik OpenAccess ORM domain model.

Once the domain...

In Q2 2011 we introduced the Profiling and Tuning advisor, which makes it easier than ever for developers using OpenAccess ORM to see what is going on behind the scenes.  In this release we are happy to expand on the profiler by introducing improved UI features, and a new Metrics view. 

The new view makes it easy for developers, and system administrators, to keep an eye on the health of an application.  It displays metrics like committed transactions, rollbacks, connection pool health, and second level cache health.  All of these metrics can be displayed with almost no performance impact on the application due...

We have a lot of exciting new features available in the Q3 2011 release of OpenAccess ORM.  Among my favorite additions are our awesome NuGet packages. These packages make it even easier to get started building a domain model using OpenAccess ORM’s fluent mapping, or code first, API.

In this release we have added two NuGet packages to the NuGet repository. When these packages are added to a project, it will be configured automatically to work with Telerik OpenAccess ORM Free Edition.  Let’s take a look at these great new additions to OpenAccess.

The Packages

The OpenAccess.CodeFirst package sets up the project for code...

In Q1 2011, Telerik OpenAccess ORM introduced a flexible type conversion system. This type conversion system allows developers to instruct OpenAccess on how to map types that it may not support out of the box. This feature makes it possible for OpenAccess to work with built in UDTs, such as SQL Spatial and XML, as well as any custom UDTs developers create.

What is a User Defined Type?

SQL Server 2005 introduced user-defined types (UDTs). UDTs extend the SQL type system by allowing you to store objects and custom data structures in a SQL Server database. UDTs can contain multiple data types...

The team has been hard at work, as always, to bring some really neat new features to Telerik OpenAccess ORM for Q2 2011.  You can check out the release notes to see the full list of new features, but make sure to sign up for the release webinar to see all these new features in action!  For now, we will take a quick look at a few features available in the new bits.

Profiler and Tuning Advisor

One of the most anticipated features in the Q2 2011 release is the OpenAccess Profiler. In Q1 2011 we introduced a new Metrics API, and the profiler...

OpenAccess, Telerik’s Object Relational Mapper (ORM) recently added many more databases that are supported in the free version! The Free Edition now supports:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005/2008
• Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005/2008
• Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5
• MySQL 5.x
• Firebird Server 2.x
• Oracle Database 10g  Express Edition
• SQLLite
• PostgreSQL 8.4+

In a nutshell, all version of SQL Server except for SQL Azure.

OpenAccess Free Edition provides powerful features that can really move you forward in your project.  Data Access code is like plumbing. Everyone needs it, but does being a plumber give you an advantage over your competitors?  Let Telerik...

Telerik OpenAccess ORM has been selected as a Best of TechEd North America 2011 finalist in the Database Development category -- congratulations to the OpenAccess team! Their hard work is paying off, especially after the well-accepted usability revamp of the Visual Designer. There is one final vital step before the winners are selected from the finalists' pool, and it is an interview which will be conducted by the editorial judging panel during TechEd. We hope to grab this one -- it is highly deserved.

If you plan to visit TechEd North America in Atlanta in May, stop by the Telerik booth and ask for an...