.NET ORM solution with class auto-generation: Subsonic, Castle AR, …?

Question

I used to work with a custom data mapping library, and curently I\'m trying to switch to a more widespread ORM solution.

After some experimentation, I refined my req

Answer 1

• able to generate usable classes from database schema (SQL Server support is enough),
• support for ActiveRecord pattern,
• programmaticaly configurable (via code or attributes, no HBM files), free.

1. Linq-to-SQL autogenerates from the database schema. One big problem is the property names are lowercase so you need a tool like this one to rename them. It isn't restricted to SQL Server.

2. It sort of supports the ActiveRecord pattern - it's very close.

3. The classes are configurable via the dbml file which is simply an XML file. Visual Studio generates a designer.cs file that allows you to add to the entities it produces as they're produced as partial classes.

A few others to have a look at besides NH and Subsonic:

• Lightspeed - free for under 8 entities, the link shows some example code. You have to define the mappings from tables to classes via an interface though so it doesn't meet 1)
• LLBlgen - it's not free