SQL - whether ad-hoc in your code, or inside your RDBMS as "stored procedures" (or similar) is a key component of most systems, but:

• ADO.NET is a complex API, requiring verbose and repetitive code for simple operations
• ORM tools (like Entity Framemork, LLBLGen Pro, etc) are great, but are massively overkill in many scenarios

Dapper provides simple and direct access to SQL databases in .NET, without the overheads of a full ORM - with correct parameterization, materialization, etc - while offloading the ADO.NET minutiae to the library. Your application code is then clear, obvious, and direct.

Mostly the brain-baby of Marc Gravell (with frequent input from others like Sam Saffron, Nick Craver, etc) while at Stack Overflow, Dapper is now one of the most popular data access tools in the .NET ecosystem.

Dapper is an ongoing work, with a lot of focus currently on AOT and build-time tooling, but the effort comes from our non-work time. If you value these efforts, consider sponsoring the project to offset our time! Dapper is freely available software, and we don't propose to change that, but it would be great if people supported OSS efforts without being threatened with a paywall.