Lars-Erik Kindblad presentation at the Capgemini Microsoft User Group 2012.

1. Introduction to FluentData
Lars-Erik Kindblad
Senior Consultant
Blog: kindblad.com

2. Agenda
 What is FluentData?
 Why was FluentData created?
 Architecture
 Sample code
 Road map
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

3. What is FluentData?
 Micro ORM for .NET
 Makes it simple to query a relational database
 Open Source
 MIT license
 http://fluentdata.codeplex.com
 NuGet: FluentData
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

4. Why was FluentData created?
 ORMs such as Entity Framework and NHibernate have too many
disadvantages
• Framework is too complex
• Forces you to design the .NET Model in a special way by using attributes and
ORM Framework specific types
• Hard to define the mapping between the database model and business model
• A lot of mapping code/XML – not any less code than SQL and manual mapping
• Uses an abstracted query language instead of SQL
o Hard to do complex queries, Generates poor SQL, Slow
• Takes a long time to learn and master
• Drag and drop designers are buggy and limiting
• = Leads to unpredictable development time and performance
 ... had to be a better way to do it
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

5. Alternatives to ORMs?
 ADO.NET
• Powerful
• Flexible
• Great performance
• ... but too much manual code
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

6. A Better Alternative?
ORM Micro ORM ADO.NET
Secure Fast
Auto mapping Simple
Flexible
Fast
Predictable
Flexible
Manual mapping
Predictable
Secure
Auto mapping
Manual mapping
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

7. Micro ORM
 Uses SQL – the native and optimized query language for databases,
rock solid – in use since the 70s
 Thin wrapper layer on top of ADO.NET:
• Reduce repetitive code
• Support auto mapping
 Map per query instead of per Entity
 = Result
• Fast
• Simple
• Efficient
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

8. Goals of FluentData
 Easy to learn
 Simple and efficient to use
 Fast
 Secure
 Single DLL
 Only the Data Access Layer should be affected by FluentData
 Select queries should be SQL, insert, update and delete queries can
be SQL or generated
 Support the major databases
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

9. Features
 Fluent API
 Supports SQL Server, SQL Server Compact, SQL Azure, Access,
MySQL, Oracle
 Use SQL to select data and builders to insert, update, delete data
 Supports
• Auto mapping and custom mapping
• Stored Procedures
• Transactions
• Multiple result sets
• Custom collections eg. ProductCollection instead of List<Product>
• Provider model
• ++
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

10. Architecture
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

11. DbContext
 Starting point for working with FluentData
 Use it to define settings such as
• ConnectionString or ConnectionStringName
• UseTransaction
 Hook up your own method to any of the supported events
• OnConnectionOpened
• OnConnectionOpening
• OnConnectionClosed
• OnExecuting
• OnExecuted
• OnError
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

12. DbCommand
 Responsible for performing the actually query against the database
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

13. Mapping
 FluentData can automap query results to your own entity type or to a
dynamic type (new in .NET 4.0)
 or you can map the query results manually
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

14. Builders
 Fluent API to generate SQL for insert, update and delete queries
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

15. Sample Code

16. Getting started
 Download FluentData.dll from either
• FluentData.CodePlex.com
• NuGet
 Add a reference to FluentData.dll in your Data Access Project
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

17. Model
Database
.NET
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

18. Create and Initialize the DbContext
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

19. INSERT DATA
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

20. Insert a Category
SQL
Builder
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

21. UPDATE DATA
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

22. Update a Product
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

23. DELETE DATA
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

24. Delete a Product
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

25. SELECT DATA
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

26. Select a Category
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

27. Select all Categories
Map to List<Category>
Map to CategoryCollection
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

28. Select all Products with the related Category
Auto Mapping
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

29. Select all Products with the related Category
Manual Mapping
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

30. Count the number of Products
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

31. Select All Categories + All Products
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

32. Select Products 1,2,3,4
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

33. TRANSACTIONS
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

34. Insert multiple products within a Transaction
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

35. Road map
 Add support for more databases
• SQLite, PostgreSQL +
 Add a Select Builder with Paging support and strongly typed auto
mapping
 Simplify code
 Single Source File
 Performance improvements
 .NET intellisense for the database model
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

36. QUESTIONS?
| Sector, Alliance, Offering

37. www.capgemini.com
The information contained in this presentation is proprietary. ©2010 Capgemini. All rights reserved