Avoid writing boring code using the Web Service Factory

One thing about the ongoing releases of the Web Service Factory (WSF) that I think may have escaped many people's notice is the inclusion of some guidance related to one of my favourite topics - avoiding writing boring code. Specifically, the WSF includes a Guidance Package for creating business entities from a database, in the same way that many code-generation tools that use CodeSmith or MyGeneration do. Note that it's not intended to be a full-blown ORM, but instead it's designed to take out some of the repetitive and error-prone work of creating a data access layer by hand, by helping to create some (but not all) of the key classes used in a data access layer.

The data access guidance package is still quite minimalist when compared with the likes of .NetTiers, but I think is still a huge time-saver. The included recipes allow you to add a database connection to your project, generate prototype business entities from database tables, generate prototype CRUD stored procedures from database tables, and generate database repository classes that are exposed to the business layer as CRUD-like operations on business entities. It's all built-in to VS2005 too and has handy-dandy wizards to walk you through the various steps so there is even less reason to type that boring code by hand now! :-)

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2009
  Those who know me will be familiar with my quest to avoid writing boring code using any tool that generates