I have been writing about some things related to Programming Inside Out while here at VS Live!  Last night I had a couple of good conversations with some vendors in this product space. 

First I talked a bit with DevExpress about their XPO product.  Currently it is the only OR Mapping product I know of that follows the Inside/Out rule.  Instead of starting with the DB and helping you map it to your objects (it does that too) it will create and update a database for you based on your objects and their relationships.  I plan to give it a closer look soon. 

The second vendor I talked with was Versant.  They not only have an OODB, but also an OR Mapping tool for .NET.  They have been in the business for several years, so I am confident we will be hearing a lot more from them.

I am glad we are seeing more companies playing in this space.  Issues of object versioning and various integration challenges will continue to be worked on to improve OODB options.  Will we see then end of the relational database anytime soon, probably not.  And, that is perfectly fine.  The most exiting thing for me is the increasing support I am seeing for Domain Driven Design concepts and tools.