Question about the benefit of using an ORM

Posted by johnny on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by johnny
Published on 2009-04-17T15:15:29Z Indexed on 2010/04/19 23:23 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 230

Filed under:

orm

|

best-practices

I want to use an ORM for learning purposes and am try nhibernate. I am using the tutorial and then I have a real project. I can go the "old way" or use an ORM. I'm not sure I totally understand the benefit. On the one hand I can create my abstractions in code such that I can change my databases and be database independent. On the other it seems that if I actually change the database columns I have to change all my code.

Why wouldn't I have my application without the ORM, change my database and change my code, instead of changing my database, orm, and code? Is it that they database structure doesn't change that much?

I believe there are real benefits because ORMs are used by so many. I'm just not sure I get it yet.

Thank you.

EDIT: In the tutorial they have many files that are used to make the ORM work

http://www.hibernate.org/362.html

In the event of an application change, it seems like a lot of extra work just to say that I have "proper" abstraction layers. Because I'm new at it it doesn't look that easy to maintain and again seems like extra work, not less.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about orm

Optimizations employed by ORM's

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm teaching JEE, especially JPA, Spring and Spring MVC. As I have not so much experience in large projects, it is difficult to know what to present to students about optimisation of ORM. At the present time, I present some classic optimisation tricks: prepared statements (most of ORM implicitely… >>> More
Which ORM to use with SQL Azure?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Just wondering what everyones thoughts on what ORM to use for SQL Azure? I'm fairly comfortable using LINQ-to-SQL and I believe it is possible to get it working with SQL Azure. However, from my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), no further improvements will be made to Linq-to-SQL in future… >>> More
PHP Doctrine ORM NestedSet

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, although I read through the manual here: http://www.doctrine-project.org/documentation/manual/1_2/hu/hierarchical-data I couldn't find a way to move a node from a Leaf to become a Root node. Any clues? The question is trivial for inserting a new node...but what about updating a node? >>> More
PHP PSR-0 + several namespaces in one file and autoload

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I've been thinking for a while about defining several namespaces in one php file and so, having several classes inside this file. Suppose, I want to implement something like Doctrine\ORM\Query\Expr: Expr.php Expr |-- Andx.php |-- Base.php |-- Comparison.php |-- Composite.php |-- From.php |-- Func… >>> More
FOSUserBundle override mapping to remove need for username

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I want to remove the need for a username in the FOSUserBundle. My users will login using an email address only and I've added real name fields as part of the user entity. I realised that I needed to redo the entire mapping as described here. I think I've done it correctly but when I try to submit… >>> More

Related posts about best-practices

Batch Best Practices and Technical Best Practices Updated

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
The Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) and Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products (Doc Id: 560367.1) have been updated with updated and new advice for the various versions of the Oracle… >>> More
Partial template specialization of free functions - best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
As most C++ programmers should know, partial template specialization of free functions is disallowed. For example, the following is illegal C++: template <class T, int N> T mul(const T& x) { return x * N; } template <class T> T mul<T, 0>(const T& x) { return T(0); } //… >>> More
Object Oriented PHP Best Practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Say I have a class which represents a person, a variable within that class would be $name. Previously, In my scripts I would create an instance of the object then set the name by just using: $object->name = "x"; However, I was told this was not best practice? That I should have a function set_name()… >>> More
Good place to look for example Database Designs - Best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have been given the task to design a database to store a lot of information for our company. Because the task is rather big and contains multiple modules where users should be able to do stuff, I'm worried about designing a good data model for this. I just don't want to end up with a badly designed… >>> More
Notification Email Best Practices--From Server Setup to Programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
All, I'm in the process now of building a SaaS tool that allows network admins to generate notification emails to the members of the end-users of our platform (among many many other things). I'm running into a bit of an "out of my expertise" wall, as I know there are a lot of variables involved… >>> More