---
title: "OR/M Smackdown - Ayende Vs. Ted Neward"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2007/5/26/orm-smackdown-ayende-vs-ted-neward.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2007/5/26/orm-smackdown-ayende-vs-ted-neward.html"
published: "2007-05-26T01:36:24"
updated: "2007-05-26T01:36:24"
tags: ["General Software Devel..."]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "The \"Object Relational Mapping\" Smackdown show between Ayende and Ted Neward has hit the blogsphere, recorded on .NET Rocks . I've listened to it live, and have not listened to the edited version, but judging from the…"
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/"
---

# OR/M Smackdown - Ayende Vs. Ted Neward

By Roy Osherove May 26, 2007 In [General Software Devel...](https://osherove.com/blog/category/general-software-devel)

**Historical article** · Originally published May 26, 2007; technical details may be outdated.

The "Object Relational Mapping" Smackdown show between [Ayende](http://www.ayende.com/) and [Ted Neward](http://blogs.tedneward.com/) has hit the blogsphere, [recorded on .NET Rocks](http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=240).

I've listened to it live, and have not listened to the edited version, but judging [from the comments on Oren's blog post](http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/05/24/The-ORM-Smackdown-at-DotNetRocks.aspx) about this, it seems that many people are taking Ted to task on how he argued for his side of things.

some random quotes from the comments:

"Ted really lost the plot, however, when he started advocating db4o as a good solution.."

"Ted used a fair few cheap debating tricks, which I would have called him up on very quickly..."

"You were too nice to Ted, Oren :) He made a lot of bold claims but you didn't ask him to back them up one by one"

and more.

I would have loved to see Ted post on his blog about this. I find that doing a _written_ debate can result in a more clarified and backed up explanation of things, because it gives you more time to think about each point.

In any case, you should definitely listen to it.

Some of the topics covered:

- Using Logic in sprocs
- sprocs vs. dynamic SQL
- object databases
- modeling the database first or the object model first ?
- more

## More in General Software Devel...

[All posts in General Software Devel...](https://osherove.com/blog/category/general-software-devel)

- Jun 4, 2007

    ### [Is Google Gears a Disaster Waiting to Happen?](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/4/is-google-gears-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen.html)

- Jun 3, 2007

    ### [Train to be a Keyboard Master with Keyboard Jedi](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/3/train-to-be-a-keyboard-master-with-keyboard-jedi.html)

- May 19, 2007

    ### [It's Time For Violence: A song about Databases](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/5/19/its-time-for-violence-a-song-about-databases.html)

- May 16, 2007

    ### [Learning new technologies: Is C# a XAML for the CLR?](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/5/16/learning-new-technologies-is-c-a-xaml-for-the-clr.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.
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- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### 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/