Object-Relational Mapping, or ORM, is a way of allowing you to access data in your database in the form of objects in your code. It is essentially a piece of code that sits alongside your code, and from there you can access database objects such as tables in the form of code objects. As it says, you can essentially break it down to mapping of objects to a relational database.
ORMs save a lot of effort by removing the need for developers to write their own code to handle the mapping of their objects to database objects. While removing the need to write SQL code in many cases, developers will want to ensure their ORM code is still performant.
There are several popular ORM libraries out there, including Hibernate, Active Record, SQLAlchemy, and Entity Framework. Which one you use depends on your technology, preference and features.
Within ORMs, there are also “micro ORMs”, which are lightweight ORMs that perform the basic tasks without additional features. The benefits of using a micro ORM are speed and simplicity. Examples of micro ORMs include Dapper.
Check out future posts on using these ORMs.
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