Concepts

Abstraction over ORM

The core idea is to have unified syntax to work with any ORM/storage. It's accomplished through the implementation of UnitOfWork, Generic Repository etc. patterns in a fully decoupled style.

The unified syntax provides an ability to switch between the different ORMs or NoSql storages without any pain: you just need to update one configuration line in application’s bootstrapper and (maybe) update mappings for your entities. Even if you are not planning to switch ORMs/storages in future, such an agnostic architecture makes your code cleaner.

Abstraction over IoC

IoC containers also have their level of abstraction in Antler framework. After installing your favourite container in application’s bootstrapper, there is no dependency on it in your code.

Testability

As said before, goal of Antler framework is to provide an ability to switch between ORMs, IoCs and databases very easily. That is very useful when writing integration tests for your functionality, because you can configure your testing environment trivially.