---
title: "The idiot's guide to O/R mappers"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/20/the-idiots-guide-to-or-mappers.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/20/the-idiots-guide-to-or-mappers.html"
published: "2003-12-20T16:28:00"
updated: "2003-12-20T16:28:00"
tags: [".Net Quotations"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Steve Eichert has been doing me a big favor. He has been explaining the whole deal with O/R mappers from the ground up and is doing a great job at it. Why is it a big favor for me? because I can now pretend like I…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# The idiot's guide to O/R mappers

By Roy Osherove December 20, 2003 In [.Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations)

**Historical article** · Originally published December 20, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

[Steve Eichert](http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/seichert/) has been doing me a big favor. He has been explaining the whole deal with O/R mappers from the ground up and is doing a great job at it. Why is it a big favor for me? because I can now pretend like I always knew what everyone else was talking about ;)

Anyway, here's some bullet lists for you to devour:

- [What is an O/R Mapper anyway?](http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/seichert/posts/4677.aspx)
- [What's the difference between an O/R Mapper and a code generator?](http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/seichert/posts/4699.aspx)
- [What advantages does dynamic sql provide an O/R Mapper that procs don't?](http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/seichert/posts/4725.aspx)
- [.NET O/R Mappers](http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/seichert/posts/4771.aspx)

Oh and I have to re-iterate the impact that [Frans Bouma's](http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/) discussion on the subject has had on me:

- [The dynamic SQL discussion is a must read](https://osherove.com/rosherove/posts/38411.aspx)

## More in .Net Quotations

[All posts in .Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations)

- Dec 24, 2003

    ### [Good Article: Strong Names and Security in the .NET Framework](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/24/good-article-strong-names-and-security-in-the-net-framework.html)

- Dec 23, 2003

    ### [Tool: The complete idiot's add-in for signing your assemblies with a strong name](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/23/tool-the-complete-idiots-add-in-for-signing-your-assemblies.html)

- Dec 20, 2003

    ### [A New Source Control system](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/20/a-new-source-control-system.html)

- Nov 28, 2003

    ### [Cool Site: divil.co.uk](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/28/cool-site-divilcouk.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/