db4o – Object Database for .Net

I have been using db4o (database for objects) for .Net for about a year and a half, and I have to tell you that you are doing yourself a disservice if you have not tried it, yet. It’s open source and it will save you tons of time. I will go into more detail in my upcoming book about Object Persistence including examples, but, db4o is one way to persist objects and that is by using an object database instead of a relational database.

If you have never used an object database before, think of it like this: you are already using .Net so you are already using objects. What you probably are not doing is using objects all the way to saving your “data”. At some point you have been messing with ugly SQL statements and maybe “mapping” objects or using a mapping layer. You may be using a “data layer” etc. All hog-wash!

db4o can save you about 50% of your development time. And that is a conservative estimate. I’ll be posting more including code in the upcoming months. Stay tuned.