Question

I’m fundamentally sick of writing data access layers. I see it as a boring and pointless endeavour. I envisage a development environment where I can just create my Entities/Models and start building the application. The time taken to write the DAL, procedures, etc… just eats my enthusiasm for a project.

What I want is a generic repository interface for my data. Something like:

public interface IRepository
{
    //Get individual TEntity item by id
    TEntity GetItem<TIdentifier, TEntity>(TIdentifier id);

    //Get individual TEntity item by the expression
    TEntity GetItem<TIdentifier, TEntity, TArg>(Expression<Func<TArg, TEntity>> expression);

    //Get individual TEntity item by the expression
    TEntity GetItem<TIdentifier, TEntity, TArg1, TArg2>(Expression<Func<TArg1, TArg2, TEntity>> expression);

    //Get all TEntity items
    IList<TEntity> GetList<TEntity>();

    //Get all TEntity items,  filtered by the expression
    IList<TEntity> GetList<TEntity, TArg>(Expression<Func<TArg, IList<TEntity>>> expression);

    //Get all TEntity items,  filtered by the expression
    IList<TEntity> GetList<TEntity, TArg1, TArg2>(Expression<Func<TArg1, TArg2, IList<TEntity>>> expression);

    TIdentifier CreateItem...

    bool UpdateItem...

    bool DeleteItem...
}

I’m specifically interested in something that would work for

• Azure Data Services
• SQL Server
• sqLite

…but the theory would apply to any data repository

Has anyone come across a ready built solution or do I have to fix the problem by writing more data access layers than I ever wanted to shake a stick at.

Note: I know about ORM’s, I want something that removes the requirement to write any of the DAL or stored procs.

Answer 1

Take a look at NHibernate, Castle ActiveRecord, SubSonic, LinqToSql, …

You say you know about ORMs, but they do pretty much exactly what your question asks for, at least to the extent possible.