Question

I have noticed, by using log4net, that when calling ISession.Update, it updates all the changed objects.

For example:

// Change 2 instances 
user1.IsDeleted = true;
user2.UserName = "Xyz";
// Call session.Update to update the 2 users
using (ITransaction transaction = session.BeginTransaction())
{
    Session.Update(user1); // This updates both user1 & user2
    transaction.Commit();
}
using (ITransaction transaction = session.BeginTransaction())
{
    Session.Update(user2); // Now there is no need for this
    transaction.Commit();
}

Is this the default behavior of NHibernate or has something to do with my mapping file?

Can I make NHibernate update one by one?

Answer 1

It’s the normal and default behavior:

Hibernate maintains a cache of Objects
that have been inserted, updated or
deleted. It also maintains a cache of
Objects that have been queried from
the database. These Objects are
referred to as persistent Objects as
long as the EntityManager that was
used to fetch them is still active.
What this means is that any changes to
these Objects within the bounds of a
transaction are automatically
persisted when the transaction is
committed. These updates are implicit
within the boundary of the transaction
and you don’t have to explicitly call
any method to persist the values.

From Hibernate Pitfalls part 2:

Q) Do I still have to do Save and
Update inside transactions?

Save() is only needed for objects that
are not persistent (such as new
objects). You can use Update to bring
an object that has been evicted back
into a session.

From NHibernate’s automatic (dirty checking) update behaviour:

I’ve just discovered that if I get an
object from an NHibernate session and
change a property on object,
NHibernate will automatically update
the object on commit without me
calling Session.Update(myObj)!

Answer: You can set Session.FlushMode to
FlushMode.Never. This will make your
operations explicit ie: on tx.Commit() or session.Flush().
Of course this will still update the
database upon commit/flush. If you do
not want this behavior, then call
session.Evict(yourObj) and it will
then become transient and NHibernate
will not issue any db commands for it.