Question

I work in a software and hardware development farm. Today one of my colleagues told me that NHibernate is only useful for small projects, and for complex or large scale projects it must be avoided. Also, it makes code harder to change.

Are those statements true?

Answer 1

Ebay uses Hibernate (the Java version that NHibernate is ported from). I don’t consider that a small project.

As far as changing code goes, consider this: Let’s assume we need to add a new property to an object.

Here is what has to be done with a hand-rolled data access layer:

• Add the column to the db table.
• Change every stored procedure that
  deals with that object / table.
  This is usually several stored
  procedures in my experience.
• Change the code in the mapping layer
• Add the property to the Object

Here is what has to be done with NHibernate:

• Add the column to the db table.
• Add the property to the HBM file
• Add the property to the object.