I think it depends on what your project needs are. If you have a more simple project with a simple db design something like the entity framework can work. I am still a little concerned over the scaleability of the entity framework. We recently used it in a new product we were developing. The bottom line was the product had a lot of complicated things that the entitiy framework just did not do well with. So in the end a number key pieces of functionaility had to be written in stored procs because the entity framework just couldn't do the work in a timely manner. Also the performance was not great even with the simple screens. Unfortunately for us it appears we will have to re-write this product without the entity framework before we can go to market with it. So in our case the entity framework has cost us a lot of money and time. Honestly we wish we had not used the entity framework to begin with.