The Ultimate Database for .NET - Sponsored Whitepaper

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Microsoft .NET is the platform of choice for implementing scalable and reliable enterprise applications from reusable components. But Visual Studio .NET developers building enterprise-class applica- tions face a quandary.

The object paradigm is now the standard for mod- eling a wide variety of real-world scenarios. However, finding a .NET-compatible data reposito- ry optimized for such applications has become a stumbling block. While object database manage- ment systems (ODBMSs) provide the convenience of transparent persistence of objects, their client- centric architecture has not scaled well in enter- prise environments. Relational database manage- ment systems (RDBMSs) do scale well, but map objects to two-dimensional relational tables. The increased overhead can reduce application per- formance to a crawl.

This article discusses the limits of using these two types of databases with C# and suggests a better alternative for .NET - a Post Object-Relational database that combines the best features of both. A Post Object-Relational databases shares with ODBMSs the ability to map data stored in back- end databases directly into an language-neutral representation. As with relational systems, a Post Object-Relational database can scale to meet the performance requirements of an enterprise-class .NET application.

ODBMSs: The Hidden Headache of Transparent Persistence