Comments on: NHibernate and Entity Framework Battle it Out in the Real World http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57 the word "pragmatic" sounds funny if you think about it... Mon, 10 May 2010 09:33:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Piglet http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-3851 Piglet Mon, 10 May 2010 09:33:34 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-3851 A tip: Before making a decision Nhibernate or Entity Framework 4.0 read this post (with ALL its comments). It sure helped me: http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/01/05/nhibernate-vs.-entity-framework-4.0.aspx A tip: Before making a decision Nhibernate or Entity Framework 4.0 read this post (with ALL its comments). It sure helped me:

http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/01/05/nhibernate-vs.-entity-framework-4.0.aspx

]]> By: Vanesa Barbosa http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-2525 Vanesa Barbosa Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:21:35 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-2525 Interesting blogs. Our development team must make the decision with VS2010, Nhibernate advise using? Interesting blogs. Our development team must make the decision with VS2010, Nhibernate advise using?

]]> By: Juan http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-2238 Juan Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:35:45 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-2238 Hi everybody. We had to make a choice some months ago, regarding the ORM mapping framework for our new project, it had around some 100 tables. Well, we tested like some 6 ORMs!, including EF. The fear we had with third party ORMs was that you leave something very importante in some other's hand and the possibility that the product could become obsolet due to a not more supported or bad supported product. Our EF team did a great job in our detached scenario using WCFs and EF in both client & server sides. After two months of hard work we made everything work fine using a special class for attaching detached entities (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/attachobjectgraph.aspx) now we have a faster development process due to sepparating our UI and BO layers from client to wcf server and created a generic Client service layer and WCF service layer for any kind of project, so we just add some dlls references and the communication channel is done! well, what else I can say. after some hard work, using .net 3.5, we are using EF in a detached scenario very elegantly (not using mar property as modified, hehe). Hi everybody. We had to make a choice some months ago, regarding the ORM mapping framework for our new project, it had around some 100 tables. Well, we tested like some 6 ORMs!, including EF. The fear we had with third party ORMs was that you leave something very importante in some other’s hand and the possibility that the product could become obsolet due to a not more supported or bad supported product.
Our EF team did a great job in our detached scenario using WCFs and EF in both client & server sides. After two months of hard work we made everything work fine using a special class for attaching detached entities

(http://www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/attachobjectgraph.aspx)

now we have a faster development process due to sepparating our UI and BO layers from client to wcf server and created a generic Client service layer and WCF service layer for any kind of project, so we just add some dlls references and the communication channel is done!

well, what else I can say. after some hard work, using .net 3.5, we are using EF in a detached scenario very elegantly (not using mar property as modified, hehe).

]]> By: Arash http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-1684 Arash Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:15:52 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-1684 Look at Mindscape's LightSpeed product. It's a very easy to use ORM with full LINQ support, meaning your LINQ query will be translated into an appropriate SQL query. I don't think NHIbernate has that yet. Look at Mindscape’s LightSpeed product. It’s a very easy to use ORM with full LINQ support, meaning your LINQ query will be translated into an appropriate SQL query. I don’t think NHIbernate has that yet.

]]> By: Dmitri http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-1146 Dmitri Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:13:19 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-1146 What did it for me was the fact that Entity Framework didn't auto-generate proxy methods for my stored procedures. Linq2SQL does it just fine, so why not EF? Also the UI support for EF in VS is really not good enough - just try adding a foreign key _after_ you've created the model, and you'll find that you have to delete the reference field manually, even after updating the model via the wizard. Right now, I'm leaning heavily towards FluentNHibernate. My guess is anyone looking for an ORM now really has no choice. When VS2010 and the new EF comes out, well, we shall see. For new projects EF might be suitable then, but I doubt existing ones will go from NH to EF. What did it for me was the fact that Entity Framework didn’t auto-generate proxy methods for my stored procedures. Linq2SQL does it just fine, so why not EF? Also the UI support for EF in VS is really not good enough – just try adding a foreign key _after_ you’ve created the model, and you’ll find that you have to delete the reference field manually, even after updating the model via the wizard.

Right now, I’m leaning heavily towards FluentNHibernate. My guess is anyone looking for an ORM now really has no choice. When VS2010 and the new EF comes out, well, we shall see. For new projects EF might be suitable then, but I doubt existing ones will go from NH to EF.

]]> By: Phantom http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-959 Phantom Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:03:24 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-959 I have faced similar objections when recommending NHibernate. It seems that people conclude that using an open source product vs a "supported product" from Microsoft is best. I am currently working with a team of developers where one of them "Loves!!!" to use datasets as the business layer. I gotta tell you, this guy knows datasets inside out and he can do anything he wants with them, but he always has to start a solution design with an ERD and the finished solution is tightly coupled with the database and he has a hard time solving problems in business terms that are not database related. When I walk into a project one of the things that I dislike is that there is always somebody that created golden rules such as "All calls to the database need to be with a stored procedure" I have faced similar objections when recommending NHibernate. It seems that people conclude that using an open source product vs a “supported product” from Microsoft is best.

I am currently working with a team of developers where one of them “Loves!!!” to use datasets as the business layer. I gotta tell you, this guy knows datasets inside out and he can do anything he wants with them, but he always has to start a solution design with an ERD and the finished solution is tightly coupled with the database and he has a hard time solving problems in business terms that are not database related.

When I walk into a project one of the things that I dislike is that there is always somebody that created golden rules such as “All calls to the database need to be with a stored procedure”

]]> By: ajepst http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-734 ajepst Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:23:19 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-734 Rod, Microsoft's dropping Linq to SQL was a factor, though we had already decided we'd primarily focus on full ORMs. In fact, though I neglected to mention it above, Microsoft's clear message that EF was the company-recommended way to do data access going forward was a notable point for EF specifically, but also a big point for the ORM approach as a whole- In a year or two, the ORM concept should be familiar and comfortable to most .Net developers, and discussions at that point should hopefully be centered on relative merits of different ORMS instead of why an ORM is better than plain old ADO hand coding. Rod, Microsoft’s dropping Linq to SQL was a factor, though we had already decided we’d primarily focus on full ORMs. In fact, though I neglected to mention it above, Microsoft’s clear message that EF was the company-recommended way to do data access going forward was a notable point for EF specifically, but also a big point for the ORM approach as a whole- In a year or two, the ORM concept should be familiar and comfortable to most .Net developers, and discussions at that point should hopefully be centered on relative merits of different ORMS instead of why an ORM is better than plain old ADO hand coding.

]]> By: Rod http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-733 Rod Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:41:24 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-733 Interesting post; a lot of teams that got all excited with the easy of use brought by Linq-to-SQL just to be let down by Microsoft might be going through the same process right now. I noticed that you didn't even mention L2S, I wonder why? Not ORM enough? Hard to make POCO classes with it? Microsoft dropping it? All of the above? Interesting post; a lot of teams that got all excited with the easy of use brought by Linq-to-SQL just to be let down by Microsoft might be going through the same process right now. I noticed that you didn’t even mention L2S, I wonder why? Not ORM enough? Hard to make POCO classes with it? Microsoft dropping it? All of the above?

]]> By: Scott Bellware http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57&cpage=1#comment-731 Scott Bellware Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:16:33 +0000 http://foofish.org/blog/?p=57#comment-731 That was almost the exact experience of my team in taking EF for a spin. Unfortunately, I kept the team trying for two months - wasting much more money than you did. Anyway... good call. I don't believe that you'll regret your decision in the end. The knowledge and experience in building apps on .NET with contemporary approaches combined with ORM is squarely in the NHibernate community. If you spend some time on the EF forum you'll start to see that the EF community is barely at the level of knowledge, expertise, or responsiveness that the NH community was at four years ago. There's no question that NH far out-performs EF in both maturity and support. It's not like you can call up Microsoft Premium Support to find out how to use EF to model some aspect of your app, anyway. The kind of support you need for an ORM is often more contextual and situational, and your best options there are either going to be a vibrant, mature, responsive community, or a consultant. In the NH world you have both, and both the community and the consulting resources have years of seasoning rather than mere months as is the case with EF. Not to mention that the baseline quality of the software people in the NH space is way beyond the EF community and will likely remain so for several years. That was almost the exact experience of my team in taking EF for a spin. Unfortunately, I kept the team trying for two months – wasting much more money than you did.

Anyway… good call. I don’t believe that you’ll regret your decision in the end. The knowledge and experience in building apps on .NET with contemporary approaches combined with ORM is squarely in the NHibernate community.

If you spend some time on the EF forum you’ll start to see that the EF community is barely at the level of knowledge, expertise, or responsiveness that the NH community was at four years ago. There’s no question that NH far out-performs EF in both maturity and support.

It’s not like you can call up Microsoft Premium Support to find out how to use EF to model some aspect of your app, anyway. The kind of support you need for an ORM is often more contextual and situational, and your best options there are either going to be a vibrant, mature, responsive community, or a consultant. In the NH world you have both, and both the community and the consulting resources have years of seasoning rather than mere months as is the case with EF. Not to mention that the baseline quality of the software people in the NH space is way beyond the EF community and will likely remain so for several years.

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