Billy McCafferty

1 - Yes it would interest me. How would .NET 3.0 affect nHibernate usage patterns?

2 - Nothing you mention here would interest me.

3 - A start to finish guide would probably work best for the majority of people.  There's tons of examples on the web that show you how to set up the simple stuff (like mappings), but next to nothing showing how to integrate nHibernate into a solid architecture.

That said, there's at least two major usage patterns for nHibernate that I'm aware of (feel free to add to this)... An active record style of approach, in which MVP, session in view, etc patterns would be appropriate, and a Unit of Work style that lets you work nearly transparently with a domain model.

In my mind, code examples would differ a great deal depending on which style of use is chosen.

Absolutely.   I was just wishing there was something like this the other day.  Would it  be possible to touch on 3.0 changes/improvements while giving a foundation for using NHibernate with 2.0?  I'd also vote for the "tweener" book like Applying DDD which I'm currently reading.  Boy, I sound like a fence-rider.  Also - I'm really interested in the FitNesse aspects too... haven't found any good intros (haven't really spent a ton of time looking, I confess) to using Fit with .NET.

NHibernate documentation is pretty good, adding another book is in my humble opinion total waste of time, there are far too many "getting started" books around (generally) and far too few with real value.

What would be interesting is a collection of case studies how NHibernate was applied in specific project, what were the problems and how those problems were solved.

This sounds like it could be a really useful resource.

With regards to .Net 3 - most companies I've work for (and it's been four this year) aren't even onto .Net 2.0 yet (or are only slowly moving), so .Net 3 is a bit too far off yet.

If you could provide a book that provided information that was agnostic to all three versions of the framework, and also provided clearly indicated framework specific information, this would be great.

I think a recipes style book would work best - most of the time, it's not so much a case of getting into NHibernate (there are some tutorials around this), but more solving specific problems with it.

The bits about Unit testing, Fitnesse and MVP sound great. I would welcome some extra guidance on how to implement MVP with ASP.Net, especially if a full example that goes beyond the usual "display a business object on a page".

Absolutely.

Will be absolutely handy in my opinion.  You have quite a few topics there... NHibernate with ASP.NET would be a complete book in itself (with lots of real-world examples, of course).  Add to that, FitNesse testing (testing of any kind), patterns, etc.... now  you're talking about a series of books.  Dunno how you would be able to do justice otherwise.

The last thing anyone needs is a book that talks about a whole lot of things, but at a very superficial level.

I would buy it, if it would provide answers, not to the straightforward issues, but to the knotty problems that you only come across in a real project.

For example, I get pissed off these days when I see yet another article on MVP, because it simply won't cover the topic in depth.  I'd like to learn about it, but I've yet to see anyone write about it with the richness of a real world project experience behind it.

Move away from the cursory examples, that's all I'd say.

Sachin

1) This would interest me and I would buy it! I think (like someone already mentioned) .NET 3.0 kind of took me by surprise. I thought I was on the cutting edge using 2.0 (so I would say stick with 2.0 for now)

But that brings up another thing. While researching ORMs I read that MS will come out with their own ORM: ObjectSpaces, in the future. I don't know if this was released with 3.0 (I think I read somewhere that it was planned to be at one time).

2) Some best practices for NHibernate and ASP.NET 2.0 Membership would be awesome!

3) I really don't read books much. I use them for reference mostly. I have found "Hibernate In Action" very useful for NHibernate

I would love a small book (20~30 pages) on FitNesse.

Billy,

This is a fantastic idea.  I would definitely purchase such a book.  And I believe that you are a prime candidate to write it.

There is a growing community of NHibernate users (as I can tell from visitors of my blog), and this specific topic definitely warrants it's own book.

I supremely prefer the build-an-application-as-you-go approach, because you are presenting the information as the reader would if they were implementing these ideas on their own.

When can I pre-order?

I think sticking with .NET 2.0 is a good way to go. Like John W., I was taken by surprise with .NET 3.0. I think it's just Microsoft's way of trying to generate buzz with new releases when most of the production world is still on 1.1 or 2.0. Maybe a small section at the end for .NET 3.0 differences, but certainly not the focus of the book (if we're talking about getting it out in a reasonable time frame, that is).

I'm torn on the model the book should follow. Building an application as you go is nice, but sometimes when I'm learning I want to skip to the fourth or fifth chapter because the previous ones bore me. I also like to flip around a book and pull out examples without having to know the context of the entire code. Then again, trying to give a useful example of an in-depth feature isn't easy if you don't have a complex "real-life" code-base to work from. It's a tricky balance, for sure. Perhaps the balance can be struck if at the beginning of each chapter you recap the current code base, such as in a special gray box area so readers who are reading straight through can safely skip it. Also, including downloadable code that I can use to load the code as it stands at the beginning of chapter 4 and go from there. On that same token, the code also gives me something to check against if my code doesn't work as expected after following along.

Whatever you do, _please_ assume I am already completely familiar with .NET syntax and the language. No need to explain to me what a method is, what encapsulation or inheritance is, etc. If I'm using an ORM I already know that stuff. :-)

Really nice things I like about technical books are exercises. In data structure/algorithm books, I like the exercises to be highly theoretical to emphasis the principle and how far it can be pushed and stretched. In books about how to write practical production code with an ORM, I want the examples to be things I can see myself using—reusable principles, perhaps even reusable code. Otherwise, I’ll take one look at the example and deem it a waste of my time to complete, citing little reusable value.

In summary, I think you should cater to an intelligent, experienced, and working audience, not the lowest common denominator (or the upper extreme)! Please, no beginner C# or .NET chapters. There are plenty of books for those people. If it’s about NHibernate, let’s talk about NHibernate.

Best of luck! You know where to find me.

"In books about how to write practical production code with an ORM, I want the examples to be things I can see myself using"

Meant to say "exercises" instead of "examples". Of course I want reuse for both, but I wanted to emphasize it for exercises.

Another "Yes" vote".

1. Yes, I'd be interested.  I've been thinking a lot about how things like DependencyProperties might be applied to domain models.

2. Not so much.

3. I llike the style of Nilsson's book, but I would prefer a little more focus (I feel like it gets off course a bit).

I've been using a home grown ORM and one of the things that has roused my interest in NHibernate is the Castle Project.

Billy,

Great idea.  I'd love to read such a book.  In the last week or so I have been looking back over your default asp.net architecture and the related articles.  Good stuff.  I'd love to see a book that builds a real world asp.net app from start to finish using the architecture specified in your previous article.  A book like that is seriously lacking in the .NET world.

As to .NET 3.0, well you know I'm a big fan :)  But, sticking to 2.0 technologies is probably the best way to go for now.  The architectural ideas can be transfered easily enough and you could always write an online chapter or such to discuss how you might have done things differently using some of the pieces from 3.0.

Like what i said in NHibernate forum, I'd like to see a real world asp.net application in the book. Actually I'm using your default asp.net architecture - NHibernate,Windsor, Generic DAO..., it's working beautifully. The only piece I don't use is MVP. It looked great at first, but soon I found it's not practical to use in most complex user interfaces. Maybe I don't understand it deeply enough. Anyway, I vote for such a book and It will become compulsory reading if it has the same quality as your articles.

I would be very interest to take a look at this book.  Couple of weeks ago, one of my friends, who is JAVA guy, introduced me that Hibernate and Spring.Java. I have beginning to look at their equialent in .NET.  Both of them are very interesting.  Currently, I have begin to use Spring.NET in one of my small projects so that I can evaluate it.  

So if you are writing a book for NHiberanate, I hope that you could bring one or two chapers to get more inside in the integration with Spring.NET.

1. That sounds interesting.

2. Not much, exception Spring.NET/NHibernate integration

3. I would like some more useful, more practical samples, not though one or two lines dummy ones.  

I'm a definate yes.....

We're still evaluating NHibernate and I can see its massive advantages however there are still lots of issues as far as I can see, especially if you are not developing a DB from scratch. I'm not sure if a paper-based book is the best idea at the moment. I'd say a solid online resource is what is really lacking from NHibernate at the moment with many of the ideas mentioned here.

The Code Project articles just don't go into enough depth and information is changing all the time. Thanks for your efforts though (including the Code Project articles) and for the response you've given to emails

Where do I preorder my copy? ('nuff said)

Just tell me where to preorder. :-)

If I got to choose the book's content, I would be sure to include NHibernate + Dependency Injection (Castle Project, Spring.NET, ObjectBuilder) + Generics + Interceptors + AOP (Seperation of Concerns) + UI Patterns (Passive View, etc)

These are the topics that are at the very top of my list of topics to investigate. Give me three of the above and it will be worth it's weight in gold to me.  If you can give some introductions on NHibernate with a few advanced topics and then focus on some of the related material (as mentioned above), the shelf life will also last a lot longer (unlike the books about WinForms 2.0).

My vote is for a start-to-finish application building book using NHibernate / Castle Project.

Yes, with membership and roles.

Cheers.

Please do!!!

I'd like to see information on how to work with web services with NHibernate, etc...

Using Windsor with NHibernate would be fantastic as well