Question

considering the latest version of Entity framework as against NHibernate, is there a reason why I should use NHibernate as opposed to the latest version of Entity framework?

Are there features of Nhibernate that is not covered by current version of Entity framework?

thanks

Answer 1

There are tons of posts about differences between NH and EF – do some yourselves research if you want to get complete answer.

Short version:

EF 4.1 brings only new way to use EF 4.0 – it means new simplified API called (DbContext) and code mapping. Both these new features are more limited than original EF 4.0.

EF 4.3 brings code-first migrations for incremental data model development.

EF 4.5 Beta / EF 5.0 Beta brings support for enums, spatial types, table valued functions, auto compiled queries + performance and API improvements.

There are a lot of NH’s features which are still not possible in EF

• More possibilities for complex mapping
• Custom type mapping
• Batch command execution
• Future queries
• 2nd level cache
• Extensibility and a lot of ready to use extensions
• A lot of hooks where you can replace NH’s default implementation with your own or add new logic
• etc.

EF has better LINQ support and it is from MS – for many companies this is important decision point. You can check data user voice to see what features are currently requested from ADO.NET team for next releases.