Can NHibernate QueryOver load DTO's with associations? - c#

I have an entity (A) with an association (B) and I want to load and transform all of those in DTO's (with less fields than their corresponding entities). So I want a similar structure of ADto's, each with an associated BDto. Can you do that with one query (preferably QueryOver-style)? Also it would be ideal if the BDto's are reused if the represent the same entity.
I usually do this for a single entity with ISession.QueryOver<...>().SelectList(...); but don't know if this works for associations as well.

If you need associations in your DTOs, you have to manually provide them. Possibly this link could give you some ideas:
http://netpl.blogspot.com/2010/12/generic-dto-model-and-other-silverlight.html
Basically, the idea is to have a generic wapper-model for your DTOs so you'd put both ADtos and BDtos there, however because of the way the model is created (a set of dictionaries) it's easy to cross reference dtos.
This doesn't have anything in common with NHibernate though, the idea is more general.

Related

Modelling a directed graph in EF CF

I'm having some trouble using EF Code First to model a graph structure. I have a situation whereby numerous concrete objects within my application can be nodes that relate on any of a number of types of edge.
For example, two User objects may have a relationship (like, dislike, related to), but each could equally relate to another type of object ('viewed' page, 'liked' message etc.)
To model this within the application I'm using a base class of GraphNode from which all of the possible nodes will inherit, and each GraphNode has a collection of Edges. Each Edge has a SourceNode, a DestinationNode and a RelationshipType (used for weighting).
I know how I would model this as a straight Database-first development, with a table for Edge that would have a surrogate key, SourceObjectID and DestinationObjectID fields which would be the PKs from the objects being linked, SourceObjectType and DestinationObjectType fields which are the type of object being related, but the site requires EF Code First implementation.
I've got it to a point where I'm using TPT inheritance, so I've got a GraphNode table with a PK that's the GraphNodeID, but it's then using this as the PK for each of the tables for the concrete types, in place of their own PKs which is going to cause problems.
Has anyone done this, or can anyone point me in the right direction for a way to do this?
As you've found out, inheritance is not a great fit for this scenario.
Other ORMs, like NHibernate, provide out-of-the-box support for "heterogeneous associations". Since EF does not, my solution is to handle this at the "service" layer (i.e. between the controllers/viewmodels and the DbContext).
What I do is create an abstraction that lets me store and retrieve elements (in my case, Notes or Comments) associated to any entity. I do that by manually storing the entity type and id of the referenced object.
This is mostly trivial except when you want to associate the elements with a non-yet-persistent entity (I handle that using some callbacks in my DbContext)

Rich domain model with ORM

I seem to be missing something and extensive use of google didn't help to improve my understanding...
Here is my problem:
I like to create my domain model in a persistence ignorant manner, for example:
I don't want to add virtual if I don't need it otherwise.
I don't like to add a default constructor, because I like my objects to always be fully constructed. Furthermore, the need for a default constructor is problematic in the context of dependency injection.
I don't want to use overly complicated mappings, because my domain model uses interfaces or other constructs not readily supported by the ORM.
One solution to this would be to have separate domain objects and data entities. Retrieval of the constructed domain objects could easily be solved using the repository pattern and building the domain object from the data entity returned by the ORM. Using AutoMapper, this would be trivial and not too much code overhead.
But I have one big problem with this approach: It seems that I can't really support lazy loading without writing code for it myself. Additionally, I would have quite a lot of classes for the same "thing", especially in the extended context of WCF and UI:
Data entity (mapped to the ORM)
Domain model
WCF DTO
View model
So, my question is: What am I missing? How is this problem generally solved?
UPDATE:
The answers so far suggest what I already feared: It looks like I have two options:
Make compromises on the domain model to match the prerequisites of the ORM and thus have a domain model the ORM leaks into
Create a lot of additional code
UPDATE:
In addition to the accepted answer, please see my answer for concrete information on how I solved those problems for me.
I would question that matching the prereqs of an ORM is necessarily "making compromises". However, some of these are fair points from the standpoint of a highly SOLID, loosely-coupled architecture.
An ORM framework exists for one sole reason; to take a domain model implemented by you, and persist it into a similar DB structure, without you having to implement a large number of bug-prone, near-impossible-to-unit-test SQL strings or stored procedures. They also easily implement concepts like lazy-loading; hydrating an object at the last minute before that object is needed, instead of building a large object graph yourself.
If you want stored procs, or have them and need to use them (whether you want to or not), most ORMs are not the right tool for the job. If you have a very complex domain structure such that the ORM cannot map the relationship between a field and its data source, I would seriously question why you are using that domain and that data source. And if you want 100% POCO objects, with no knowledge of the persistence mechanism behind, then you will likely end up doing an end run around most of the power of an ORM, because if the domain doesn't have virtual members or child collections that can be replaced with proxies, then you are forced to eager-load the entire object graph (which may well be impossible if you have a massive interlinked object graph).
While ORMs do require some knowledge in the domain of the persistence mechanism in terms of domain design, an ORM still results in much more SOLID designs, IMO. Without an ORM, these are your options:
Roll your own Repository that contains a method to produce and persist every type of "top-level" object in your domain (a "God Object" anti-pattern)
Create DAOs that each work on a different object type. These types require you to hard-code the get and set between ADO DataReaders and your objects; in the average case a mapping greatly simplifies the process. The DAOs also have to know about each other; to persist an Invoice you need the DAO for the Invoice, which needs a DAO for the InvoiceLine, Customer and GeneralLedger objects as well. And, there must be a common, abstracted transaction control mechanism built into all of this.
Set up an ActiveRecord pattern where objects persist themselves (and put even more knowledge about the persistence mechanism into your domain)
Overall, the second option is the most SOLID, but more often than not it turns into a beast-and-two-thirds to maintain, especially when dealing with a domain containing backreferences and circular references. For instance, for fast retrieval and/or traversal, an InvoiceLineDetail record (perhaps containing shipping notes or tax information) might refer directly to the Invoice as well as the InvoiceLine to which it belongs. That creates a 3-node circular reference that requires either an O(n^2) algorithm to detect that the object has been handled already, or hard-coded logic concerning a "cascade" behavior for the backreference. I've had to implement "graph walkers" before; trust me, you DO NOT WANT to do this if there is ANY other way of doing the job.
So, in conclusion, my opinion is that ORMs are the least of all evils given a sufficiently complex domain. They encapsulate much of what is not SOLID about persistence mechanisms, and reduce knowledge of the domain about its persistence to very high-level implementation details that break down to simple rules ("all domain objects must have all their public members marked virtual").
In short - it is not solved
(here goes additional useless characters to post my awesome answer)
All good points.
I don't have an answer (but the comment got too long when I decided to add something about stored procs) except to say my philosophy seems to be identical to yours and I code or code generate.
Things like partial classes make this a lot easier than it used to be in the early .NET days. But ORMs (as a distinct "thing" as opposed to something that just gets done in getting to and from the database) still require a LOT of compromises and they are, frankly, too leaky of an abstraction for me. And I'm not big on having a lot of dupe classes because my designs tend to have a very long life and change a lot over the years (decades, even).
As far as the database side, stored procs are a necessity in my view. I know that ORMs support them, but the tendency is not to do so by most ORM users and that is a huge negative for me - because they talk about a best practice and then they couple to a table-based design even if it is created from a code-first model. Seems to me they should look at an object datastore if they don't want to use a relational database in a way which utilizes its strengths. I believe in Code AND Database first - i.e. model the database and the object model simultaneously back and forth and then work inwards from both ends. I'm going to lay it out right here:
If you let your developers code ORM against your tables, your app is going to have problems being able to live for years. Tables need to change. More and more people are going to want to knock up against those entities, and now they all are using an ORM generated from tables. And you are going to want to refactor your tables over time. In addition, only stored procedures are going to give you any kind of usable role-based manageability without dealing with every tabl on a per-column GRANT basis - which is super-painful. If you program well in OO, you have to understand the benefits of controlled coupling. That's all stored procedures are - USE THEM so your database has a well-defined interface. Or don't use a relational database if you just want a "dumb" datastore.
Have you looked at the Entity Framework 4.1 Code First? IIRC, the domain objects are pure POCOs.
this what we did on our latest project, and it worked out pretty well
use EF 4.1 with virtual keywords for our business objects and have our own custom implementation of T4 template. Wrapping the ObjectContext behind an interface for repository style dataaccess.
using automapper to convert between Bo To DTO
using autoMapper to convert between ViewModel and DTO.
you would think that viewmodel and Dto and Business objects are same thing, and they might look same, but they have a very clear seperation in terms of concerns.
View Models are more about UI screen, DTO is more about the task you are accomplishing, and Business objects primarily concerned about the domain
There are some comprimises along the way, but if you want EF, then the benfits outweigh things that you give up
Over a year later, I have solved these problems for me now.
Using NHibernate, I am able to map fairly complex Domain Models to reasonable database designs that wouldn't make a DBA cringe.
Sometimes it is needed to create a new implementation of the IUserType interface so that NHibernate can correctly persist a custom type. Thanks to NHibernates extensible nature, that is no big deal.
I found no way to avoid adding virtual to my properties without loosing lazy loading. I still don't particularly like it, especially because of all the warnings from Code Analysis about virtual properties without derived classes overriding them, but out of pragmatism, I can now live with it.
For the default constructor I also found a solution I can live with. I add the constructors I need as public constructors and I add an obsolete protected constructor for NHibernate to use:
[Obsolete("This constructor exists because of NHibernate. Do not use.")]
protected DataExportForeignKey()
{
}

Exposing derived types via data service for OData queries

I have created an EF4 CTP5 based code first model that includes two entities in a parent-child relationship where the child entity contains several extra fields. Both types are derived from the same table TPH and use a newly created discriminator. Now, I need to figure out how to expose the child entityset via the data service and make it available for querying.
The use-case for this is that we have a table that contains a hierarchy of clients. Each client has a parent and zero or more children. A parent contains just the information needed to set-up the client and for billing (name, address, etc.). The children (you can think of them as sattelite branches) contain an additional set of properties that are unique to them in addition to what they inherit from the parent. All are contained in the same table that has been denormalized for pure search performance.
So far, I have exposed the entity set in the manner suggested in this blog post It suggests exposing a method that returns the context.Child IQueryable collection. However, this entity set is way too large (700k+ records) to just expose the entire thing and I cannot seem to get standard oData queries to work against the service operation.
My questions are numerous but to keep this post as concise as possible I will limit them.
•First, I want to know if this is still the best and only way to handle this? It seems like not allowing derived types to be exposed without this workaround is a major gap in functionality.
•Second, how can I query this entityset? Is this possible? Is it possible I do not have something materialized properly in the EF piece?
Any and all help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Best and thanks in advance!

Repository; Mapping between POCOs / Linq-to-Sql entity classes

I'm making my first database program, with Sql Express. Currently I'm using Linq-to-Sql for data access, and my repository classes return "entity" type objects. Meaning; I extend the dbml entity classes to use as my business object classes. Now I want to make this more separated; and have POCO bussiness objects.
This is where I wonder about what different solutions may exist. It looks to me like I need to manually map property-by-property, each entity class into domain class, in the repositories. I have so far about 20 tables with total few hundred columns. Now.. I just want to verify if this is a common/typical approach that you still use? And if there are alternatives without introducing excessive complexity, what would that be?
Before creating your mappings manually, have a look at AutoMapper
AutoMapper is an object-object mapper.
Object-object mapping works by
transforming an input object of one
type into an output object of a
different type. What makes AutoMapper
interesting is that it provides some
interesting conventions to take the
dirty work out of figuring out how to
map type A to type B. As long as type
B follows AutoMapper's established
convention, almost zero configuration
is needed to map two types.
AutoMapper is a good tool to use to perform class-to-class conversions. However, I'm thinking of a DAL that combines Linq2Sql and AutoMapper, and I'm thinking why not just go with Fluent NHibernate? It's very easy to set up, works on just about any database including SqlExpress, and there is a Linq provider that integrates pretty seamlessly. All of this is free open-source code, and very commonly-used so there's ample documentation and support.
If you want to stay with Linq2Sql but have a more full-featured domain model, you could consider deriving your domain model from the DTOs. That would allow you to have the business logic in the domain, with the properties passed up to the DTO. However, understand that the Linq2SQL objects will not be able to be directly cast to domain objects; you'll need a constructor in the domain that takes a DTO and copies the info into the domain (requiring at least a one-way mapping of DTO to domain). However, the domain can be treated like a DTO (because a class is always its parent) so the reverse conversion isn't necessary; just hand the domain class to the repository where it would expect the DTO.

Application Design - Database Tables and Interfaces

I have a database with tables for each entity in the system. e.g. PersonTable has columns PersonId, Name, HomeStateId. There is also a table for 'reference data' (i.e. states, countries, all currencies, etc.) data that will be used to fill drop down list boxes. This reference table will also be used so that PersonTable's HomeStateId will be a foreign key to the reference table.
In the C# application we have interfaces and classes defined for the entity.
e.g. PersonImplementationClass : IPersonInterface. The reason for having the interfaces for each entity is because the actual entity class will store data differently depending on a 3rd party product that may change.
The question is, should the interface have properties for Name, HomeStateId, and HomeStateName (which will be retrieved from the reference table). OR should the interface not expose the structure of the database, i.e. NOT have HomeStateId, and just have Name, HomeStateName?
I'd say you're on the right track when thinking about property names!
Model your classes as you would in the real world.
Forget the database patterns and naming conventions of StateID and foreign keys in general. A person has a city, not a cityID.
It'll be up to your data layer to map and populate the properties of those objects at run time. You should have the freedom to express your intent and the representation of 'real world' objects in your code, and not be stuck to your DB implementation.
Either way is acceptable, but they both have their pros and cons.
The first way (entities have IDs) is analagous to the ActiveRecord pattern, where your entities are thin wrappers over the database structure. This is often a flexible and fast way of structuring your data layer, because your entities have freedom to work directly with the database to accomplish domain operations. The drawback is that when the data model changes, your app is likely to need maintenance.
The second way (entities reflect more of a real-world structure) is more analagous to a heavier ORM like Entity Framework or Hibernate. In this type of data access layer, your entity management framework would take care of automatically mapping the entities back and forth into the database. This more cleanly separates the application from the data, but can be a lot more plumbing to deal with.
This is a big choice, and shouldn't be taken lightly. It really depends on your project requirements and size, who will be consuming it.
It may help to separate the design a little bit.
For each entity, use two classes:
One that deals with database operations on the entity (where you would put IDs)
One that is a simple data object (where you would have standard fields that actually mean something)
As #womp mentioned, if your entity persistence is only going to be to databases, strongly consider the use of an ORM so you don't end up rolling your own.

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