>But you can't have it both ways. IMHO, strong typing way, way outweighs some of the explicitness that is required in some scenarios especially given that in most cases it's merely a matter of using type cast. I've been down this path - I cursed strong typing at first as well, but after a short while its benefits way outweigh its shortcomings IMHO.

It's funny that sometimes things (such as the strong typing feature) are a curse for some and a blessing for others. For me it's a blessing whithout any doubt.
I use generated code for my dal and that way most of the .net-doesn't-have-proper-data-handling discussion isn't much of a deal for me and I still find it incredible that the compiler intercepts problems in the code, if for example I do a schema change in the db.