Easy to Start, Easy to Use
Designing NHibernate models with Entity Developer is easy and intuitive. Only the most frequently used mapping parameters are accessed through the editor dialog boxes, making our editors simple and easy to understand. If you need more extended mapping tuning, you can find all the available parameters of a model object in the Properties window. All the mapping is defined visually, you don't need to manually edit XML mapping files.
Rich Mapping Functionality
Entity Developer for NHibernate supports almost all features of NHibernate mapping. It supports one-to-many, one-to-one and many-to-many associations, components, composite id, all kinds of inheritance hierarchies, navigation properties for components, collections of components, etc.
Advanced Drag-and-drop Support
To accelerate model design process, our NHibernate designer provides wide support for drag-and-drop functionality. After you have established a database connection, you may drag database tables and views from the Database Explorer window to your model diagram to create classes for these tables with already defined mapping. To quickly create a TPC or TPH hierarchy in a model, reverse-engineered from a database, you may just drag several properties from the class to create a base or derived class from them. In the same way, you may quickly create an NHibernate component from a set of class properties.
Seamless Visual Studio Integration
Entity Developer seamlessly integrates with Visual Studio. The model is created and edited just like any other Visual Studio project item. Code for a model is generated each time you save the model and is automatically placed to the project, containing the model, by default. You may redirect code output to other Visual Studio projects.
Keep Your Model Valid
Our NHibernate designer always validates your model while you are editing it. All errors and warnings automatically appear in the Error List window. Error list displays error or warning message and its location.
You can easily navigate to the object that caused an error by double-clicking it in the Error List window. Thus you may find and fix model errors quickly and conveniently.
Generate Ready to Use NHibernate Configuration
With Entity Developer for NHibernate you may generate classes and mapping from the existing database in a few steps. Entity Developer generates POCO classes in C# or Visual Basic, and it can generate both XML and fluent mapping.
Entity Developer for NHibernate provides a number of useful settings for code generation. You can customize output folder for generated entities or output Visual Studio project. File per class option allows you to choose whether to generate classes either into a single code file or into a separate code file for each persistent class. In the latter case (which is used by default) you may generate partial classes with a separate file for generated code and a file for user code per class (Code-behind). Entity Developer can generate classes with or without Equals and GetHashCode implementation, IValidatable interface implementation, and support for IPropertyChanging and IPropertyChanged events.
For XML mapping you may customize output settings, use the File per class option. XML mapping is generated as an embedded resource by default.
Entity Developer for NHibernate full support for Fluent NHibernate mapping - it supports all kinds of inheritances, components, composite IDs, etc.
Entity Developer is also capable to generate NHibernate configuration XML code to the App.config file of the project or to a separate *.cfg.xml file. Configuration parameters are set in the Model Settings dialog box.
Test Your Model at Design-Time
Entity Developer for NHibernate allows viewing and editing data of tables, views, and model entities, create and execute LINQ and HQL queries against the model, eliminating the need for additional applications and reducing the time for accessing these operations.
Model Refactoring
Powerful Model Refactoring feature allows users to automatically build TPT or TPC inheritance hierarchy or a complex type from several entities having a common subset of properties in few clicks.
Preparing Test Data
Powerful Model Refactoring feature allows users to automatically build TPT or TPC inheritance hierarchy or a complex type from several entities having a common subset of properties in few clicks.
Designing and Debugging LINQ and HQL Queries
Entity Developer allows you to execute LINQ or HQL queries directly against the model without the need to write the sample application. You can use our built-in query editor, to design queries, which can be saved for future use.
