Q&A: Will my favourite ORM Foo work with SQL Azure?
Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson.
short answer: Quite probably, as SQL Azure is very similar to SQL Server
longer answer: Object Relational Mappers (ORMs) that work with SQL Server are likely but not guaranteed to work with SQL Azure. The differences between the RDBMS versions are small – but may cause problems, for example in tools used to create the mapping between objects and tables or in generated SQL from the ORM which expects “certain things” :-)
More specifically:
- ADO.NET Entity Framework / LINQ to Entities can be used with SQL Azure, but the Visual Studio designer does not currently work. You will need to point the designer at a version of your database running of SQL Server to create the mapping, then change the connection details to run against SQL Azure.
- LINQ to SQL has similar issues to ADO.NET Entity Framework above
- NHibernate can be used against SQL Azure
- DevExpress XPO supports SQL Azure from version 9.3
- DataObjects.Net supports SQL Azure
- Open Access from Telerik works “seamlessly” - their words not mine :-)
The list above is by no means comprehensive – please leave a comment with details of other ORMs that work (or do not work) with SQL Azure.
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