Tools to convert database tables to c# classes

Question

Is there any free tool or plug-in for Visual Studio to convert the SQL tables to entity,model,facade and DAO classes? I am working on SQL server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and C#.

Answer 1

Codesmith?

Answer 2

Try using SQLMetal from Microsoft. The files aren't pretty, but they work and also provide LINQ functionality. It's also free :)

I've used it first hand, and it works very well. The beauty of it is, it generates everything from one command.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Have you tried LINQ to SQL (although the future of LINQ to SQL is a bit vague)?

If you were using Visual Studio 2010 you'd get Entity Framework tooling in the box.

There's also NHibernate which has a variety of free tooling:

Free NHibernate helper tools? (Stack Overflow)

Answer 4

I'm pretty sure NHibernate is free. It's a pretty common tool for ORP. All you have to do is write some XML to map class fields to tables and you're set.

http://community.jboss.org/wiki/NHibernateforNET

Forgot to mention...another reason I like NHibernate is that is completely abstracts away the specific type of relational system you are connecting to, thus making your code more portable. I might be wrong but I always thought that Linq was very tightly coupled with SQL Server (M$ love lock-in) -- NHibernate gives you freedom from this in case at some point your back end relational system is no longer SQL Server.

Answer 5

Entity Framework may be a better choice.

Answer 6

Subsonic does what you ask. It has ActiveRecord and Repository style implementations, for your choosing.

Answer 7

You should give Subsonic a try. NHibernate is probably one the mature ORMs. If you are a part of an organization, you might have some of the heavy duty and expensive ORMs like the Telerik OpenAccess or DevExpress XPO. My first ORM was Adapdev Codus. Unfortunately, I have no idea why the developer hit the high road...