ORM, or object-relational mapping, is one of the tougher things to accomplish in modern, object-oriented programming languages. It involves moving away from the traditional data store paradigm: there is no (or very little) dedicated, pre-compiled code involved in reading/writing an object to/from the database or other backing store. Instead, the logic involved in accessing the backing store is determined at runtime using a combination of reflection and attributes that decorate the business objects in question. Many projects and frameworks have been created to try to address this concept, with varying degrees of success.