Team -

I'm considering using NHibernate in an upcoming development project; one of the principles of this application is "configurable flexibility" - specifically allowing users to to add their own defined properties/collections to existing application objects, and/or create their own application objects for reference as necessary.

I would like to break the question into to forms, as creating user defined properties will solve a great deal of the problem; and creating objects is less important.

1.) How (if at all) can NHibernate be leveraged to support the ability for users to define new properties/attributes to application objects (i.e. we create something called Address, and they wish to add "Suburb to it for display purposes and reporting") etc.

2.) In the same context, how can NHibernate be leveraged to support application controlled creation of User Defined Objects (and ultimately properties)

The primary application will have logic that consume what is pre-defined on the delivered objects/properties - but anything user defined well then become available to reference in certain parts of the app, i.e. displayable fields, administration for entities, references for reporting and other functionality.

If this has been done before and/or Source Code is available that would be great; else any insight on the topic is appreciated.

Thanks,
Gracie

Check out NSurvey (now called Feedback Server). While living as NSurvey, the source was available (I think it is still available on SourceForge) and it did something similar to what your asking. It allowed the user to create new types of questions, answer types, etc. It would store the information in database tables and emit the code during runtime. Pretty slick if you can still find it. Sorry I can't be of more help.

-d