Question

I couldn’t found a clear answer on that:
Is the ADO.NET Entity Framework a full featured persistence framework like Hibernate for Java?

Is there a any (other) persistence framework in .net? I only found open source frameworks like nHibernate but no clear answer if there is something build-in in .net. What’s the best practice to get persistence in .net?

Answer 1

when you talk about persistence layer, usually that is databases or file systems, when you talk about Entity Framework it is called ORMs, and yes, I think in the .Net environment NHibernate and Entity Framework should be two of the most popular ORMs.

ORMs help you to think about your data as objects in your domain, instead of thinking about tables and fields and rows, so it abstracts the technical aspect of persistence and gives you a more model-driven approach while you are writting software.

I use to read a lot about domain-driven design as an architectural guide, but now here in stack overflow I’ve received many suggestions on using hexagonal architecture, all these patterns and practices help you to buidl better software, and I guess we will never stop learning. So yep, think about ORMs like artifacts to help you focus on more important aspects of your code rather than just making tables and querys. Hope it helps,