Linq to NHibernate : is it mature?

Question

I'm thinking about using Linq to NHibernate in an upcoming project, so I'd like some feedback about it. I found this identical question asked in February, and it seemed that Linq to NHibernate was not very mature at this time... Has it improved since then ? Has anyone used it in real life applications ?

Thanks for your feedback

PS: please do not close as duplicate : the existing question is almost 1 year old and I'm asking about the current status of the product...

Answer 1

Ayende (one of the more vocal contributors to NHibernate) noted in a blog post this week that NHibernate's LINQ support is somewhat lacking (as compared to Microsoft's Entity Framework). I don't believe much has changed in the last year in the production code base. He does note that the next version of NHibernate will improve on this support.

Answer 2

Linq to NHibernate is OK most of the time, but you need a fallback option.

I use it in a large project as the default query language as I expect it to become more mature soon, and I especially like its agnosicism towards the underlying framework - you can use it if you know the basics about O/R mappers and Linq; you don't need to be super-familiar with NHibernate in special. The other options for writing queries, especially the criteria query API, pose some extra learning effort. For most of the features, complex queries are not required, and Linq to NHibernate is good for some Wheres and OrderBys.

However, there are still odd cases of failure where the query itself is OK, but the generated SQL just is not. In these cases I don't spend time examining what's up, but fall back to the criteria query API.

Answer 3

Please refer to http://nhibernate.info/blog/2009/12/16/linq-to-nhibernate-progress-report-a-christmas-gift.html for the latest info