Entity Framework vs. nHibernate for Performance, Learning Curve overall features

Question

I know this has been asked several times and I have read all the posts as well but they all are very old. And considering there have been advancements in versions and releases, I am hoping there might be fresh views.

We are building a new application on ASP.NET MVC and need to finalize on an ORM tool. We have never used ORM before and have pretty much boiled down to two - nHibernate & Entity Framework.

I really need some advice from someone who has used both these tools and can recommend based on experience. There are three points that I am focusing on to finalize -

1. Performance
2. Learning Curve
3. Overall Capability

Your advice will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Answer 1

I would use Nhibernate. I would pickup Sharp Architecture as a great framework that wraps NHibernate, ASP.NET MVC and a bunch of other open-source tools into a coherent whole that will give you a solid architectural foundation.

Nhibernate is more mature than EF4. It is well supported by the community. As long as you are willing to get your hands dirty from time to time, you will like it. It's support for LINQ is currently a little weak but it is rapidly getting better. The learning curve is not bad, but things like session management can be a little confusing at first. One of the reasons I like Sharp Architecture is they have all the NHibernate stuff you will need in place and plenty of guidance on how to use it properly in an ASP.NET MVC project.

EF4 has the MS stamp of approval. It is pretty good now but still behind NHibernate. It is a perfectly good choice and you will find lots of docs from MS, MS support and eventually more developers that are familiar with the ins and outs. I should also mention that the Sharp Architecture folks are adding support for EF4 to their overall framework. They will still support NHibernate, but you will be able to use EF4 if you like.