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The Entity Framework is an OODB in disguise
I was talking to Scott Bellware during a presentation about the entity framework, and I think that I have a new idea about what the Entity Framework is trying to do.
From the vision statement, it looks like Microsoft is trying to build a data management system, including all the relevant tools, that is beyond RDBMS. The mention of reporting, replication, querying, etc against the entity model is what is mentioned as the key differenciator from OR/M such as NHibernate.
In the DotNetRocks episode talking about Entity Framework, Daniel has mentioned that they are thinking about relaxing RDBMS constraints (but keeping the model's ones). This, to me, signify departure from the RDBMS land, and when you are talking about non-RDBMS data management, there aren't many options out there.
Considering the entity framework in this light, it starts to make a lot more sense. It is not an attempt to make an OR/M, it is an attempt to build an OODB system, without calling it that (probably because of the bad rep).
This is a much more ambitious endavour, and probably Microsoft is one of the few that can do it, but I still think that they are trying to ambrace too much.
Comments
Hm, not that I know of, there is this:
http://www.ayende.com/Blog/archive/2006/05/12/7615.aspx
But I am not sure that this is an authoritative source
I don't think I saw this in your list but I like the choice of the disonnected/connected model in LLBLGen.
Even if it isn't an approved official standard, there is a list of features you should except from an ORM in Chris Richardson's POJOs in Action book. This list includes the features supported in popular frameworks (N)Hibernate and Kodo JDO.
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