PLINQO for NHibernate?

As my Uncle Ben once said, "with great insomnia comes great responsibility." Or maybe that was Spiderman, I don't remember. All I know is that I couldn't go to sleep last night, and when I came to this morning there was a proof of concept PLINQO for NHibernate architecture on my screen.

I am not saying we are working on PLINQO for NHibernate...yet.

NHibernate is a well established ORM that is backed by a great community, and frankly, they have their own way of doing things. NHibernate is built on some great principals: patterns, testability, and openness. Also, things like Fluent NHibernate and Sharp Architecture are examples of some superb extensions to the base NHibernate framework, and they are perfectly tailored to fit NHibernate needs.

Originally we had thought that creating PLINQO templates for NHibernate would be going against the grain of the NHibernate community. The architecture of PLINQO, specifically it's query extension pattern, is a bit of an anti-pattern. Also PLINQO is based on LINQ to SQL, and not all of it's features are needed in the more mature NHibernate framework.

So if we were to make PLINQO for NHibernate, what value would it provide?

First and foremost, simplicity.
A major goal of PLINQO is to get the end user up and running as fast as possible. A major complaint of NHibernate is that it can be very complex to setup. It seems that simplifying the start up process would be a major advantage to new users.

This could provide a migration path to NHibernate.
Using LINQ to SQL or PLINQO and want to switch to NHibernate? Maybe you need more DB Providers, maybe you like open source components, or maybe you have converted to the church of Rhino; in any case, this would be a great way to make that transition quick and easy.

PLINQO for NHibernate means more PLINQO.
...and I LOVE PLINQO! I certainly don't think more PLINQO could hurt anyone, heck, I'm pretty sure that it will help someone! Also, on a personal note, I would get to code more PLINQO! If you can't tell from all the exclamation points, I find that prospect to be freak'n exciting!

What would PLINQO for NHibernate look like?

Remember back when you were in grade school and your teacher told you that there were no stupid questions? That was a stupid question.

Ideally the PLINQO NHibernate templates would generate you a matching data layer. You would swap out your templates, update your namespaces, and you're back in business.

[Test]
public void ByQueries()
{
    // This DataContext is powered by a NHibernate ISession
    using (var db = new PetshopDataContext())
    {
        var x = db.Product
            .ByName(ContainmentOperator.NotEquals, "A")
            .ByDescn("B")
            .FirstOrDefault();

        var y = db.Product
            .ByName(ContainmentOperator.StartsWith, "B")
            .ByDescn("B");
                
        var z = y.ToList();

        Assert.AreEqual(1, z.Count);
        Assert.AreEqual(x.Id, z[0].Id);
    }
}

So by the way, that code snippet is real, and that test succeeds.