Question

I wonder what is the best way to organize working with database from C# code.

I used to have different approaches for that:

1. Each object has Save, Update and Delete methods, which implemented all the logic.
2. There was some static class that has static methods Get, GetList, Update — almost the same method as previous, but database logic was extracted from data domain class.

Now I think it will be great to have some non-static classes for each of datadomain class I need to store somewhere, that will do the storage.

What is the best way to do it? Are there any good libraries that provide good API for storing objects?

Answer 1

Use a Object/Relation Mapper (ORM). My personal favorite is nhibernate. Use Entity Framework if you want a Microsoft product.

ORM’s usually implement UnitOfWork and Repository patterns which makes it easier for you to handle database operations and follow the Single Responsibility Principle.

You also mentioned singletons. I would avoid them if possible. Have you tried to unit test a class that uses singletons? It’s impossible unless the singleton is a proxy for the actual implementation. The easiest way to remove singletons is to invert dependencies by using dependecy injection. There are several containers available.