Transcript A little history…

• An “Object/Relational Mapping” tool
• Free and open source
• Simplifies storage of object data in a
relational database
• Removes the need to write and maintain
SQL queries
A little history…
Origins of Databases and Objects
• DBMS technology invented late 1960’s
• OO technology invented late 1960’s
• Independent evolution for over 20 years
• Different audiences
– DBMS: corporate information systems
– OO: academic and scientific
The Rise of Client/Server
• Corporate IT in early ’90s
• High cost of mainframe hardware
• Low cost of the IBM PC-based platform
• Desire to move away from COBOL
• The “hot” languages were OO
– Smalltalk
– C++
Object Meets Relational
• Corporate IT already deeply invested in
RDBMS
• “We’ll just connect up our new client
server applications to these databases!”
• Efforts to marry the two technologies
• Discovery of the “O/R Impedance
Mismatch”
The object/relational conflict
DBMS Representation
• Based on the concept of a Relation
– A set of data values that “go together”
– Represented as a Row in a Table
• No two rows should be duplicates
– Useless to state the same fact twice
• Very useful for flexible set manipulation
– SQL queries
Object-Oriented Representation
• An object is a model of something in the
real world
• Public interfaces
– How an object interacts with the rest of the
world
• Private members
– How an object behaves internally
Object-Oriented Representation
• Merges data and behavior
– Allows an object to initiate interactions and
respond flexibly to them
– Important for modeling the real world
• Effective OO models allow for very high
reuse
– Parcel program logic and data into selfdefined and self-consistent bundles
Object-Oriented Representation
• Each object (instance) is unique
– even if all data members are equal
• Object types inherit from other types
– allows for the creation of rich, powerful
models
– allows opportunities for reuse
O/R “Impedance Mismatch”
• Impedance matching
– from electronics theory
– matching a power source with a power load
• Mismatch between object and relational
technologies
– Different theoretical foundations
• Relations are facts about data relatedness
• Objects are models of reality
O/R “Impedance Mismatch”
• Mismatched uniqueness rules
– Rows containing identical data are “the same”
• Considered undesirable
– Objects containing identical data are different
• Common and useful
• “equal”, but not “==“
• Mismatched data model topologies
– Relational tables are flat
– Object types are hierarchical
O/R Mapping Tools
• Invented in early 1990’s
• One of the first came from Cleveland
– Raleigh Systems’ ObjectPM
• Shield the OO application from the
database paradigm
• Mappings to tables and columns are
localized in configuration files
[Enter: Hibernate]
• Initially developed for Java
– created in late 2001 by Gavin King
– absorbed by the JBoss Group / Red Hat
• Ported to .NET 1.1 and 2.0
– Resulting product called “NHibernate”
• All popular databases supported
• XML-based configuration files
What NHibernate Does
• Takes as input
– a C# class with properties that need to be stored in
a database and retrieved later
– an XML file containing mapping information
• Outputs automatically generated SQL
– when you tell NHibernate to “save” an object
– when you ask NHibernate to search/load objects
– can also create all database tables if desired
How to Use NHibernate
• Step 1: create an object oriented
business model
– Start simple: one or two small classes
– Note which properties will save in DBMS
• Implement the model using C#
– Best kept in a separate C# project
Step 2: The Mapping File
• One per business model class
• Named classname.hbm.xml
• Tells NHibernate where data is to reside
– Name of table to store data for this class
– Name of a column for each property in class
• Also describes relationships between classes
– One-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many
• Generated SQL is based on this information
Step 3: Configuration File
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XML-based file for global configuration
Usually named “hibernate.cfg.xml”
Application-wide settings
Database connection string
Database “dialect”
– Specifies database product and version
– Allows NHibernate to use non-standard features
where appropriate
• Logging options
Step 4: User Interface Tasks
• Create business model objects
• Create an NHibernate session object
• Insert/Update to DBMS
– Session.save(object)
• Retrieve business model data from the
DBMS as business model objects
– Session.load(type, id)
– Session.find(query)
Step 5: Unit Test and Debug
• Unit tests can be created for each
persistent class if desired
– VSTS unit testing support
– NUnit
• Run, test and debug in the usual
fashion
• Sit back and relax….
• You’re done!
Questions