There is a specific cirumstance in my application where I serialize an object to a binary stream to be deserialized at some another point. This object potentially has a collection which I would like to be lazy-loaded.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how this is going to interact with the NHibernate session and potentially open db connections. Does NHibernate handle this somehow, ie. close all connections and enable itself to be serialized? Or will I have to take some manual action?

Oops, ok found a mention of a problem to serializing/deserializing persistent collections in the FAQ (NHibernate is deleting and reinserting collections):

http://wiki.nhibernate.org/display/NH/Frequently+Asked+Questions

I imagine serializing/deserializing still causes these symptoms, else the FAQ would probably have been updated. I'll have to experiment with this case I suppose. If anyone has any more information on this it would be much appreciated.