Why Fluent NHibernate vs. hbm XML files?

Question

While this is a subjective question, as a new NHibernate user, I'm curious as to why one would choose Fluent vs traditional XML mapping.

From my standpoint, when I first worked with NHibernate, I used the Fluent interface, but ran into some roadblocks and had a hard time finding adequate documentation for the Fluent interface for anything beyond a 'toy app', so I learned to handle these via XML.

Over time, I realized I did most of my work on the XML side, and realized it was not as horrific as I thought it would be. So for me personally, it was a case of poor documentation and not seeing a significant savings in coding time.

That being said, there may be some huge advantage/disadvantage that I'm missing, and I'd really like to hear some opinions from folks who have more experience in working with these tools.

Answer 1

Compile-time safety and refactoring (renaming classes, properties) are one of the benefits you get from fluent mappings. Using one language (C# or VB.NET) to write mappings, program code and data access is another benefit.

Answer 2

• Compile-time name- and type-safety
• IntelliSense to show you which fluent methods are available at any point
• Customizable defaults
• Automapper