In the last  major web application development I worked on we auto generated a whole data layer based on a defined database schema. Microsoft have popped their heads up now with ADO.NET advancements and are offering up their own Entity type objects.
Channel9 have got a nice video regarding this and the ADO.NET team blog also has a good introduction to where they are going with this. Thanks to Lee Campbell for pointing me in the right direction this morning...

UPDATE: I also just read another quick 'rant' from Rick Strahl which I remember from reading previous articles on his blog has the same problem as me with having to hack autogenerated class files for Web Service Proxy classes.