"quasi-professional cowboy" here. I have used both ORM and direct SQL systems with the problems outlined above. I finally gave up and wrote my own row mapper:
1. Using the DB Schema, generate stored procedures to load and save data together with code/validation in partial C# classes.
2. Transport data in XML format using single letter (or two) table/element and column/attribute names (auto generated). Use .Net to automatically build/ serialize the XML into objects. SQL Server/.Net have some nice XML features that make this simple.
This means that the only user access to the database is through authorized stored procedures. The users have no access to database views or tables.
I have implemented the means to load and save arbitrary hierarchical objects (e.g. an Order/Order Lines). A single request to the database can return a complex three level object which would otherwise take hundreds to round trips to load.
I agree with the observation that this would be hell to maintain. However, the people likely to maintain this system would be in just a different hell if they had to work with Hibernate or MS Entity Data Model.
1. Using the DB Schema, generate stored procedures to load and save data together with code/validation in partial C# classes.
2. Transport data in XML format using single letter (or two) table/element and column/attribute names (auto generated). Use .Net to automatically build/ serialize the XML into objects. SQL Server/.Net have some nice XML features that make this simple.
This means that the only user access to the database is through authorized stored procedures. The users have no access to database views or tables.
I have implemented the means to load and save arbitrary hierarchical objects (e.g. an Order/Order Lines). A single request to the database can return a complex three level object which would otherwise take hundreds to round trips to load.
I agree with the observation that this would be hell to maintain. However, the people likely to maintain this system would be in just a different hell if they had to work with Hibernate or MS Entity Data Model.