Saturday, November 7, 2009

Interoperability Happens - The Vietnam of Computer Science


Two years ago, at Microsoft's TechEd in San Diego, I was involved in a conversation at an after-conference event with Harry Pierson and Clemens Vasters, and as is typical when the three of us get together, architectural topics were at the forefront of our discussions. An crowd gathered around us, and it turned into an impromptu birds-of-a-feather session. The subject of object/relational mapping technologies came up, and it was there and then that I first coined the phrase, "Object/relational mapping is the Vietnam of Computer Science". In the intervening time, I've received numerous requests to flesh out the discussion behind that statement, and given Microsoft's recent announcement regarding "entity support" in ADO.NET 3.0 and the acceptance of the Java Persistence API as a replacement for both EJB Entity Beans and JDO, it seemed time to do exactly that.

This is one of the best articles on the ORM in which the whole thing is compared to the Vietnam War. Above is the just short teaser. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the read. And for those that get through the whole thing, I guess I fall into category #3 - "Manual Mapping." Remember, in war -- there is nothing glamorous about it.

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