Chapter 1, The Configuration and Schema, explains various methods for configuring NHibernate and generating your database.

Chapter 2, Models and Mappings, introduces mappings in both XML and code, and includes more advanced topics such as versioning and concurrency.

Chapter 3, Sessions and Transactions, covers several techniques for proper session and transaction management in your application, including distributed transactions.

Chapter 4, Queries, demonstrates a number of rich query APIs, including the LINQ provider and the QueryOver API.

Chapter 5, Improving Performance, lets you know how to reduce application startup time by using serialized configuration. We also dig deep into how caching and advanced querying techniques can improve the performance of your application.

Chapter 6, Testing, introduces some techniques you can apply to quickly test your NHibernate applications and includes an introduction to NHibernate Profiler.

Chapter 7, Data Access Layer, shows how to build a flexible, extensible data access layer based on NHibernate and its many query APIs.

Chapter 8, Extending NHibernate, shows a number of ways to customize and extend NHibernate to provide additional services such as audit logging and data encryption.

Chapter 9, NHibernate Contribution Projects, introduces several NHibernate Contribution projects, adding features such as caching, data validation, full text search, geospatial data, and horizontal partitioning of databases.

To complete the recipes in this book, you'll need the following tools:

This book is written for .NET developers who want to use NHibernate and those who want to deepen their knowledge of the platform. Examples are written in C# and XML. Some basic knowledge of SQL is assumed. If you build .NET applications that use relational databases, this book is for you.

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it work, There's more, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Add a new folder named NamedQueries to the project."

A block of code is set as follows:

var sessionFactory = ProductModel
  .CreateExampleSessionFactory(true);
var kernel = new StandardKernel();
kernel.Load(new NinjectBindings());
kernel.Bind<ISessionFactory>()

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

public class BooksController : Controller
{
  [NHibernateSession]
  public ActionResult Index()
  {
    var books = DataAccessLayer.GetBooks()

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

Install-Package NHibernate -project SessionRecipes

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Don't forget to set the Build action to Embedded Resource."

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