Can the MS Enterprise Library build object model and code from a database?

Question

I have just encountered the MS Enterprise Application Library 3.1 in an application I need to support/enhance. I am trying to get up to speed quickly on Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data in particular.

The doc on this is quite good but the reading is vast and I am curious about one aspect of this:

Years ago when .Net 1.0 first came out, there was a tool described in a book called: ".Net Enterprise Development in VB.NET: From Design to Development" by Matthew Reynolds, Karli Watson, et al.

This tool was called the WEO Object Builder (Wrox Enterprise Objects) and as I recall it had a code generation facility where I could point this "object builder" program at a SQL Server database and it would generate an object model (classes corresponding to tables but with several variations and options available too).

This current project I've been handed uses:

using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Sql;
using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common;
using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data;

..and some of the doc reminds me of this old WEO thing.

Enterprise Library has an Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder and Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder2 but I don't think these do the same sort of thing as the old WEO thing did.

Is there a "modern-day" tool which builds "business objects" from a database schema? I've heard about the Entity Framework but not investigated at all?

Answer 1

Entity Framework and NHibernate are a couple of Object Relational Mappers (ORMs).

Enterprise Library doesn't have ORM capabilities.