Announcing Project "Vanilla DAL"

I just filed in my first open source project for hosting at sourceforge.net. Project review is still pending, so there is no official site yet, but I guess I can already post my proposal in here:

Vanilla DAL is a data access framework on top of ADO.NET. It aims to simplify the developer's job when accessing relational database systems by providing the following functionality:

• Structured organization of SQL statements within XML-files (as opposed to the way Visual Studio's query builder generates SQL code).


• Convenience implementations for recurring tasks.


• Wrapping database-specific components, hence laying the groundwork for database independence.


• Object-relational mapping of typed datasets and database tables.


• Automated optimistic locking facility.


• A simple mechanism for propagating transaction context through data access methods.

It is important to ensure a low learning curve. Vanilla DAL should be understood and applied within the shortest possible amount of time. Design goals: no performance overhead, no constraints of what the developer can do, lightweight and consistent API.

So far all I have is this idea, and about one to two hours of spare time during weekdays for pursuing the project. My baby-son goes to bed around 8pm, so afterwards I can get going - I have done a lot of tech research during the night lately, but it's starting to be a little bit tiring, and want to get my hands on coding some stuff that grabbed my interest for quite a while already.

More on Vanilla DAL during the next weeks...