Hello

I'm starting on a new project, where I want to try out NHibernate. I'm new to NHibernate and don't really know where to start. I'm looking for advice where I should start and what steps I take from there on until I have build my database, DAL for my distributed WinForms .Net 2.0 app.

Here are some of my concerns:

How do I design a database that is easy ORM'ed?

How do I create the mappings for NHibernate. Using a tool of some kind, would be great.

How do I make the remote connection between the business layer and the data layer using .Net 2.0. I have been thinking about .Net remoting, lazy load seems to be an issue too.

I have been reading the sample chapter in NHibernate in action, it looks good. Should I read that or some other book/article(s)?

I have also been looking at some of the NHibernate tools, a few of them looks good too. But which should I choose, I won't pay more than 100$ for a license.

Thanks in advance :-)

Hi koger,

I would recommend you NHibernate in Action book, it's really a good book if you want to build applications using NHibernate and you want to take full advantage of it.

Regarding database design - in my opinion if database design is good for other application building styles it should do good also for ORM. Joe Celko has quite good hints for database design. Here is one of his articles: http://www.intelligententerprise.com/001205/celko1_1.jhtml , which point out some convention, design mistakes, and good practices.

For Winforms I would also recommend you .NET remoting if you need fast data transfer and if you are building application for LAN networks. MSDN has a lot of help files, articles, and examples how to do it (e.g. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/kwdt6w2k(VS.80).aspx).

Regarding tools you can try our product NConstruct Lite, which was released today. It creates source code for entities and NHibernate hbm files, using your database metadata. I already posted a brief presentation post about it today (http://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?t=984039). It is a free tool so you have nothing to lose. :-)

If you need additional help on any topic, please let me know.