SubSonic is an open source project loosely modeled after Rails. It uses BuildProviders to automatically generate the DAL/ORM code at compile time, meaning you don't have to manually regenerate code every time your database schema changes.

The downside was that the code was only auto-generated for Web Site projects, not Web Application or Class Library projects. So Rob Conery has a recent post about using Pre-build Steps to autogenerate the SubSonic code for all types of projects.

So, read the "What will it do for me?" on the SubSonic home page, and check out the first 5-10 minutes of a recent screencast. If you like what you see, maybe try it out in your projects.

If you aren't already using DALs and code generation to accelerate your development work, you really owe it to yourself to check it out. :)