Windows Developer Power Tools

5.2 Generating Your Data-Access Layer with Codus

Data-access layers are responsible for the mundane task of retrieving data from and saving data to databases. Any complicated business rules are restricted to the business layer, and the UI logic is all in the presentation layer. This makes data-access-layer code repetitive, predictable, and often painful to write—and a prime candidate for code generation.

Codus is an application that will quickly and easily generate a complete data-access layer for you, including entities, data-access objects, and even NUnit tests. It does not try to be an all-encompassing code-generation solution, but rather focuses on one particular area of the application—data access—and does it quite well.

Codus at a Glance
Tool	Codus
Version covered	1.2
Home page	http://www.adapdev.com/codus/
Power Tools page	http://www.windevpowertools.com/tools/3
Summary	A code-generation tool that will generate a complete data-access layer, including entities, data-access objects, and even NUnit tests
License type	Apache License 2.0 (free for commercial and non-commercial use; generated code is license-free)
Online resources	Forums, email
Supported Frameworks	.NET 1.1, 2.0
Related tools in this book	MyGeneration, NHibernate

Getting Started

The distribution for Codus is a simple executable; however, source is also available. Download Codus from the Download link on its home page, and then run the ...