Not a lot of time at the moment, but just off the top of my head...
The entity model lets you give a consistent interface to the database (and other possible systems) even beyond what a stored procedure interface can do. By using enterprise-wide business models you can make sure that all applications affect the data consistently which is a VERY important thing. Otherwise you end up with bad data, which is just plain evil.
If you only have one application then you don't really have an "enterprise" system, regardless of how big that application or your data are. In that case you can use an approach similar to what you talk about. Just be aware of the work that will be needed if you decide to grow your systems in the future.
Here are a few things that you should keep in mind (IMO) though:
- Generated SQL code is bad
(exceptions to follow). Sorry, I
know that a lot of people think that
it's a huge time saver, but I've
never found a system that could
generate more efficient code than
what I could write and often the
code is just plain horrible. You
also often end up generating a ton
of SQL code that never gets used.
The exception here is very simple
patterns, like maybe lookup tables.
A lot of people get carried away on
it though.
- Entities <> Tables (or even logical data model entities necessarily). A data model often has data rules that should be enforced as closely to the database as possible which can include rules around how table rows relate to each other or other similar rules that are too complex for declarative RI. These should be handled in stored procedures. If all of your stored procedures are simple CRUD procs, you can't do that. On top of that, the CRUD model usually creates performance issues because it doesn't minimize round trips across the network to the database. That's often the biggest bottleneck in an enterprise application.
