ADO.NET Entity Framework - It's not just O/R mapping
Pablo Castro re-announced the Entity Framework. The white papers are up again.
A lot of people have been referring to the ADO.NET EF as an O/R mapper. And it is. But it's much more than that.
The EF lets you design your conceptual model based on updateable client-side views. You can use those views without Objects (I mean objects in the 'domain model' sense, of course you will use some CLR object to access it).
Additionally, the same conceptual model will eventually be used in other MS products, like Reporting Services, Replication, Analysis Services, and probably third party products. This means that you will want to create an Entity Framework model for your conceptual model because you will get a lot of value from it, not just a O/R mapping layer. You can even think of creating it and not using O/R mapping at all.
I think this is very good news for people building applications for the Microsoft platform.