May i ask which is better, Devexpress App Framework or LLBLGEN Pro?

Apples vs. oranges, llblgen pro is a persistance framework with far more features than XPO, yet we don't do anything about UI's as we focus on data-access, not UI's.

An excolleage asked me about Genome vs. LLBLGen, I didnt know what to say except, holy crap thats expensive. I did say that I trust LLBLGen as a company, and the community and suport was great.

Another thing I pointed out was the Genome Mapping File? I told the person that this sounds slow and hackable, besides who wants to muck with XML mapping files when you can write C#.

So, Frans, how do you compare LLBLGen to Genome?

I know the guys from techtalk personally and they're friendly people (one of them left for Intentional software though). Their o/r mapper isn't that bad, though they lack a set of features which I think is essential for data-access, like authorization, auditing, REAL linq implementation (although their linq provider is quite OK compared to the rest of the o/r mappers who claim 'linq support'. Not as good as ours though ), and a proper designer. They use dynamic proxy for dealing with POCO classes which is a mixed bag: it could be great but has serious side-effects in for example distributed scenarios.

From second hand sources I heard it's also not quite that fast, but I haven't tested that myself.

I also agree that messing with xml files is not the way to go. You can get very far with an xml file with domains the size of northwind, but when you have hundreds of entities or even more, it's starting to become really really complex. With all the work done on llblgen v3's designer in the past 10 months or so, I learned that model-first is really only doable in a designer which helps you along the way and tells you that this is wrong and that is ok and do this to correct that so you don't lose any time.