Mapping a three dimensional object design to a flat, two dimensional, relational database is a waste of time and no longer needed. Actually, it’s no longer needed for many years now.
Have a look at the open source OODBMS "db4o" at http://www.db4o.com
db4o supports .NET and Java. Awesome stuff if you asked me. In my 15 years of professional software engineering, a true OODBMS can save you at least 50% of development time and, more importantly, 50% of support, maintenance cost, time and headaches over the live span of an application until it is retired.
I’m always amazed how narrow minded we have become as developers and forced into this outdated, droned, “Borg”-like thinking that we should design our apps based on a database schema. This used to be funny, but, sadly, it’s become a sorry cancer in our profession.
I understand that for existing applications or applications that we inherited one way or another, a good Object Relational Mapping layer (ORM) is a compromise and the way to go until you have a chance to change the architecture.
I can go on forever; but, check out db4o. It’s very promising. I’m using it in one of my applications with C#.
http://cdima.livejournal.com/242309.html