Gavin King

NHibernate in Action

NHibernate in Action begins by describing how to implement persistence in a layered .NET application. The book then quickly springs into action by introducing NHibernate through a classic "Hello World" example. It explains how to configure NHibernate to specify the mapping information between business objects and database tables, and then explores the internal architecture of NHibernate. A complete example application is progressively built with Agile methodologies in mind, which shows readers all kinds of entity and relationship mappings and how to perform CRUD operations. The book also covers advanced techniques like caching, concurrency access, and isolation levels. The Hibernate Query Language (HQL) and criteria query APIs are thoroughly detailed with optimization tips.

The last chapters of this book discuss various development scenarios, how to implement the layers of an NHibernate application (covering Windows and Web development), and which tools are available for these tasks. They also provide some solutions for data-binding objects to .NET GUI controls, integrating services, and interacting with components using DataSets. Finally, they explain how to build a complex application involving advanced session management and distributed transactions.