You do not have to write your own persistence layer. Instead, you can use Object Relational Persistence (ORP) to turn relational database data into business objects and jump straight to building your application.

In this article Ward Bell, IdeaBlade's Vice President of Product Management, will orient you to Object Relational Persistence (ORP) and then build a little Employee Viewer application using IdeaBlade and .NET. He will also show that it is easy to test your ORP business model so you can get in step with "test-driven development (TDD)."

IdeaBlade has been getting considerable mention in various prominent BLOGs and discussion groups. If you see IdeaBlade posted in a BLOG, let us know so we can pass it along.

Here are some influential BLOGs that have mentioned IdeaBlade recently and that you might want to bookmark for future reference:

Brad McCabe's Personal BLOG
John Gossman: Tales from the Smart Client
Mike Gunderloy: The Daily Grind
Craig McMurtry's Personal BLOG
Robert Scoble: The Scobleizer
Brian Parker: CEO and Cofounder of NeoTekSystems

Here is a quote from Mike Gunderloy's recent review of IdeaBlade-Lite;

"What makes IdeaBlade stand out from some of the other entrants in the .NET application framework arena is the amount of work that it does and the polish of the tools that it delivers for free."

An updated version of IdeaBlade-Lite is now available. If you downloaded your version before July 15, make sure you get the lastest version of our RAD Framework for .NET.

As always, IdeaBlade-Lite is free.