Q:

LINQ or something else?

I recently left a small company where we were writing .NET MVC apps using LINQ2SQL for data access to take a new position.  Here they are still using web forms and an in house written ORM, but are looking to move to MVC and possible LINQ2SQL here in the near future.  I personally liked everything about LINQ2SQL except for the problems you run into when you make changes to a table (adding a column or something) and having to regenerate the dbml file everytime.  
1) Has that issue already been worked out or does anyone know if Microsoft is planning on resolving that issue?
2) If we were going to use something other than LINQ2SQL here for our new data access layer, what would everyone's suggestions be?

A:

The current MS push is towards Entity Framework. Why? Because, frankly, LINQ to SQL was a kludge thrown in due to EF being delayed. I love LINQ as a means of "iterating" (not quite true, as it works on rX instead of enumerations, but that is probably getting a bit too technically specific).
If you want to head where MS is heading, I would aim for EF. I, personally, find some issues in the current iteration, but it is getting better. Your mileage may vary.
If that is not the way for data access, I would consider a non-custom OR Mapper. There are tons of them out there, many of which have a long history and are stable enough to recommend for Enterprise use (nHibernate, as an example). Maintaining a custom OR Mapper is more work than a team should incur, unless it is absolutely necessary.

