I read this article where Ayende states NHibernate can (compared to EF 4):
Collection with lazy=”extra” – Lazy extra means that NHibernate adapts to
the operations that you might run on
top of your collections. That means
that blog.Posts.Count will not force a
load of the entire collection, but
rather would create a “select count(*)
from Posts where BlogId = 1”
statement, and that
blog.Posts.Contains() will likewise
result in a single
query rather than
paying the price of loading the entire
collection to memory.
Collection filters and paged collections - this allows you to
define additional filters (including
paging!) on top of your entities
collections, which means that you can
easily page through the blog.Posts
collection, and not have to load the
entire thing into memory.
So I decided to put together a test case. I created the cliché Blog model as a simple demonstration, with two classes as follows:
public class Blog
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual string Name { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Post> Posts { get; private set; }
public virtual void AddPost(Post item)
{
if (Posts == null) Posts = new List<Post>();
if (!Posts.Contains(item)) Posts.Add(item);
}
}
public class Post
{
public virtual int Id { get; private set; }
public virtual string Title { get; set; }
public virtual string Body { get; set; }
public virtual Blog Blog { get; private set; }
}
My mappings files look like this:
<hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" default-access="property" auto-import="true" default-cascade="none" default-lazy="true">
<class xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" name="Model.Blog, TestEntityFramework, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" table="Blogs">
<id name="Id" type="System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
<column name="Id" />
<generator class="identity" />
</id>
<property name="Name" type="System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
<column name="Name" />
</property>
<property name="Type" type="System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
<column name="Type" />
</property>
<bag lazy="extra" name="Posts">
<key>
<column name="Blog_Id" />
</key>
<one-to-many class="Model.Post, TestEntityFramework, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" />
</bag>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
<hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" default-access="property" auto-import="true" default-cascade="none" default-lazy="true">
<class xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" name="Model.Post, TestEntityFramework, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" table="Posts">
<id name="Id" type="System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
<column name="Id" />
<generator class="identity" />
</id>
<property name="Title" type="System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
<column name="Title" />
</property>
<property name="Body" type="System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
<column name="Body" />
</property>
<many-to-one class="Model.Blog, TestEntityFramework, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" name="Blog">
<column name="Blog_id" />
</many-to-one>
</class>
</hibernate-mapping>
My test case looks something like this:
using (ISession session = Configuration.Current.CreateSession()) // this class returns a custom ISession that represents either EF4 or NHibernate
{
blogs = (from b in session.Linq<Blog>()
where b.Name.Contains("Test")
orderby b.Id
select b);
Console.WriteLine("# of Blogs containing 'Test': {0}", blogs.Count());
Console.WriteLine("Viewing the first 5 matching Blogs.");
foreach (Blog b in blogs.Skip(0).Take(5))
{
Console.WriteLine("Blog #{0} \"{1}\" has {2} Posts.", b.Id, b.Name, b.Posts.Count);
Console.WriteLine("Viewing first 5 matching Posts.");
foreach (Post p in b.Posts.Skip(0).Take(5))
{
Console.WriteLine("Post #{0} \"{1}\" \"{2}\"", p.Id, p.Title, p.Body);
}
}
}
Using lazy="extra", the call to b.Posts.Count does do a SELECT COUNT(Id)... which is great. However, b.Posts.Skip(0).Take(5) just grabs all Posts for Blog.Id = ?id, and then
LINQ on the application side is just taking the first 5 from the resulting collection.
What gives?
