Question

I am currently evaluating dotConnect for Oracle as an alternative to switching to SQL Server at my company altogether.

We are currently developing ASP.NET MVC2 applications with datasets and oracle, but we would like to switch to entity framework for persistence. I understand that dotConnect offers support for visual designers in Visual Studio. Does anybody have any experience with the product? Does it have disadvantages to using the designers with SQL Server, or any other drawbacks?

Any hint or experience would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Chris

Answer 1

We are now using dotConnect for oracle in a project in which we are forced to use Oracle per client requirements (we usually use SQL Server). I have been using it for a short time but for now my impression can’t be more positive. The product looks quite polished, and it integrates very well with Visual Studio.

About the visual designers, we are using a feature of dotConnect named Linq to Oracle, which is almost an exact clone of Linq to Sql: the visual designer is very similar, and the members of the DataContext class have basically the same names. This is being very useful for us, a team used to SQL Server/Linq to Sql and without previous Oracle experience.

Disadvantages? It is a paid product, while SQL Server tools are already integrated within Visual Studio. I can’t think of any other. 🙂

Devart has a trial version of the product anyway. I recommend you to give a try.