NHibernate update causes a select of a row's computed columns - nhibernate

I've got a User class that I want to update. There's a User table in my database with two columns among others: FirstName and Lastname and there's a computed column called DisplayName that concatenates the two with a space in the middle. The NHibernate mapping for DisplayName is
<property name="DisplayName" type="string" generated="always"/>
When I update the User object and commit the transaction, NHibernate runs an extra select statement just on the DisplayName property, I presume to keep the object and the DB row in sync. I don't need that as the object goes out of scope right afterwards.
Is there something I can do to tell NHibernate that there's no need to get the updated DisplayName at this time?
Regards,
F.

generated="always" means exactly that: "this is a value generated by the DB every time I modify this row; please refresh it for me".
NH does not have a concept like "only refresh this if a particular column changed".
My opinion is that you should generate that value in your domain model instead of the DB.

Related

Mapping a property to another table using NHibernate

I have a users table that is updated by other systems. I have mapped the table to my users objects and that work great. As user data is owned by another system I don't want to change the structure of that table.
I want to add metadata to the user objects, but without changing the structure of the users table. I want to add a flag that tells me whether the user is an administrator or not. I think this flag could be stored in a table that only has one column which is the id of the user. whether a matching row is present would be represented as a boolean property on the user.
Is it possible to map this in NHibernate? I would like it so that I can update this directly through NHibernate.
You should investigate the <join> mapping, usage is described in this article.

NHibernate HiLo generation and SQL 2005/8 Schemas

I have an issue on my hands that I've spent several days searching for an answer to no avail...
We're using HiLo Id generation, and everything seems to be working fine, as long as the entity table is in the same schema as the hibernate_unique_key table.
The table structure is pretty simple. I have my hi value table in the db as dbo.hibernate_unique_key. Several entity table are also in the dbo schema, and they work without issue. Then we have tables under the "Contact" schema (such as Contact.Person and Contact.Address).
In the Person Mapping file:
<class name="Person" table="Person" schema="Contact">
<id name="Id" unsaved-value="0">
<generator class="hilo">
<param name="max_lo">100</param>
</generator>
</id>
...
When I try to insert a Person entity, I get an error of "Invalid object name 'Contact.hibernate_unique_key'. That error is certainly clear enough. So I add:
<param name="schema">dbo</param>
to my mapping file/generator element. Now, when the SessionFactory is built, I get a "An item with the same key has already been added." error. So now I'm a bit stuck. I can't leave the HiLo generator without a schema, because it picks up the schema from the Class, and I can't specify the schema because it's already been added (presumably because it's my "default_schema" as identified in my XML cfg file).
Am I completely hosed here? Must I either
A) Keep all my tables in the dbo schema or
B) Create a separate HiLo Key table for each unique schema in the DB?
Neither of those scenarios is particularly palatable for my application, so I'm hoping that I can "fix" my mapping files to address this issue.
Only one such table per database should exist. Such data table should imply the following columns (let's call this table Parameters):
HiLoId
TableName
ParamName
HiLoAssigned
In addition to be used as a HiLo assignment data table, this could be used as a parameter table. As such, the ParamName field is required. This could contain data such as:
HiLoId | TableName | ParamName | HiLoAssigned
---------------------------------------------
1 | Parameters| HiLoId | 3
2 | Customers | CustomerId| 9425
3 | Invoices | InvoiceId | 134978
And when you need some other parameters, such as a parameter for a job that would prune your tables for history, then an age parameter for record could be inserted into it.
Well, I'm a little further in the subject than what you actually asked. Just sharing some additional thoughts in database design/architecture.
Take an eye out this question, and see my answer there. This might answer your question as well, and bring further information to this answer.
Have you tried specifying the schema with the table name on all generators (including the ones already in the dbo schema? I.e.
<param name="table">dbo.hibernate_unique_key</param>
The hilo generator looks for a '.' in the table name, and qualifies it (with schema) only if one isn't there.
I don't think there's anything wrong with solution B. Behavior will be pretty much the same.

nhibernate mapping: delete collection, insert new collection with old IDs

my issue lokks similar to this one: (link)
but i have one-to-many association:
<set name="Fields" cascade="all-delete-orphan" lazy="false" inverse="true">
<key column="[TEMPLATE_ID]"></key>
<one-to-many class="MyNamespace.Field, MyLibrary"/>
</set>
(i also tried to use )
this mapping is for Template object. this one and the Field object has their ID generators set to identity.
so when i call session.Update for the Template object it works fine, well, almost:
if the Field object has an Id number, UPDATE sql request is called, if the Id is 0, the INSERT is performed. But if i delete a Field object from the collection it has no effect for the Database. I found that if i also call session.Delete for this Field object, everything will be ok, but due to client-server architecture i don't know what to delete.
so i decided to delete all the collection elements from the DB and call session.Update with a new collection. and i've got an issue: nhibernate performs the UPDATE operation for the Field objects that has non-zero Id, but they are removed from DB!
maybe i should use some other Id generator or smth..
what is the best way to make nhibernate perform "delete all"/"insert all" routine for the collection?
Is the entity you are updateing already associated with the session? (ie do you load the entity and modify that loaded instance)?
It sound like you are trying to tell nhibernate to update a detached entity, in this case nhiberante cannot know what entities as been added/removed in the collection. In this case you could use Merge:
var mergedEntity = session.Merge(entityPasedFromClient)
The merge operation will fetch the enity from the db compare it with the one that as been sent from the client and merge them, that way the entity that nhiberante fetch from the db (and is associated with the session) is modified and later fetched, the merged entity is returned (this will not be the same instance as the entity you pass the merge operation).
I am not sure I understand the last part of your question:
"so i decided to delete all the collection elements from the DB and call session.Update with a new collection. and i've got an issue: nhibernate performs the UPDATE operation for the Field objects that has non-zero Id, but they are removed from DB!"
Are the field items updated and then removed?

Nhibernate many-to-one problem

I've got a problem with mapping many-to-one in the following code:
...
<property name ="CustomerID"/>
<!-- Many-to-one mapping: Customer -->
<many-to-one name="Customer"
class="Customer"
column="CustomerID"
insert="false" update="false"/>
<property name="Date" />
...
You may notice that i have mapped two CustomerID to Customer table. The reason i do this because when i want to create an Order, i just only assign value to CustomerID and other require fields then do save. many-to-one mapping, I just want to get detail of each customerID.
But, the problem is that: after i update customerID of an Order and Executre SaveOrUpdate with Session.Flush() also (I'm using HibernateTemplate), i still got the old figure when accessing to Order.Customer.
i.e:
Order = getOderByID(1);
Order.CustomerID=3 // Suppose value of CustomerId is 1. Now I changed to 3
SaveOrUpdate(Order);
Print(Order.Customer.CustomerID)// it returns 1 which is wrong. It should be 3
Pls help...
Thanks,
I would suggest you to look at this problem from an NHibernate point of view. And not from a relational database view. Let me start with what i feel you should be doing.
var customer = session.Load<Customer>(3);
var order = session.Load<Order>(1);
order.Customer = customer;
//assuming this is a one directional mapping. otherwise you might
//have to do some more steps to disassociate the order from the old
//customers collection and add it to the new customers collection
session.SaveOrUpdate(order);
Now, order.Customer.CustomerID will return 3.
As Serkan suggested, its better and more feasible to work with objects instead of primary keys.
Also, there really shouldnt be any performance impact here. Nhibernate is able to proxy a lot of the associations as long as the classes have virtual public methods. Because of this, as long as you only query for the Id of the customer, it will not generate a separate sql query. The Id is already there with the proxy object.
With regards to the original question, I have a hunch. NHibernate dynamically generates the sql query for the update and the inserts. This case here is of an update. You have explicitly set the CustomerID property to 3. But the Customer property of the order object still points to the customer object with Id 1. So, when NHibernate generates the sql query, it trys to set the value first to 1, as you asked it to. Then it also sees that the Customer is still pointing to the old object, so reset the CustomerId property to 1. I think NHibernate is getting confused with the dual mappings.
There are two things that you can do. First enable the "show_sql" property in the NHibernate configuration.
<nhibernate>
...
<add key="hibernate.show_sql" value="true" />
</nhibernate>
Check what is the sql being generated when you save the order. That will explain things better.
Second, after saving the order, do session.Refresh(order); You can read about the Refresh() method here. Its towards the end of the section 9.2. It will reload the order object with fresh values from the database. Calling order.CustomerID should show what value you have stored in the database.
I think you'd feel much happier in the long run if you try to forget about Id's of entities once you are done with the OR mapping. You are in a different level which you should think in objects only. If I were you I would remove CustomerId property all together.
If you have performance issues try to solve them in NHibernate way, caching etc.
Two things to try
Flushing the session via Session.Dispose if it's NH 2.x otherwise use Flush()
Make your IDs client assigned.
NHibernate will create the IDs for you and try to manage them unless you specifically tell it not to.

Should NHibernate assign id to entities or should it be handled by application?

I'm writing an application and started to test my domain model entities. If I Create an instance of entity Company like this var company = new Company("my company"); I should get a valid entity, meaning the company should at this moment have an Id correct?
So the problem is that at the moment I have the Id generation made in the DB defined in an hbm file like this:
<id name="ObjectIdentity" column="CompanyId" type="System.Guid" unsaved-value="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000">
<generator class="guid.comb"/>
</id>
This causes a problem when writing unittests as I do not have en entity with an Id as it dosen't touch the db in the test, aka I have an invalid entity.
Now should I assign Id in the application and not let nhibernate be in charge of this or is this the wrong way to do it?
In most cases you should be letting NHibernate do its job which is to handle persistence. This is important since it allows you to easily change things (we went from identity to hilo mid-project).
I would question why you care that a newly created object has an id or not? From a business point of view a persistence ID is not relevant and shouldn't be checked with via unit tests. This as mentioned is the domain of integration tests. You should be careful in how you are using an objects persistence Id throughout the rest of your application. Remember this should NOT be treated as the objects business id/key.
You need to call Session.Save on the entity before a guid is generated. You can call Session.Save to generate the entity without actually saving it to the database. This article does a pretty decent job of explaining it
Neither NHibernate nor the Application should be handling identifiers. Leave it to the database since this is the only concrete store of your data, and it is the only part of your application that knows what IDs have already been assigned and what ones are available.
Make an identity primary key column on your database table:
CREATE TABLE dbo.sample (
id int primary key identity(1,1),
...
...
...)
map your entities like this:
<id name="ID" column="id">
<generator class="identity" />
</id>
The Primary key will be generated automatically by the database when you save a new entity for the first time. IDENTITY(1,1) means "give new rows an Identity start at '1' then each subsequent row gets incremented by 1": so 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
You need to save the entity to get an id if you're using db generated identity,
if you wish to create your own identities - it is fine.
do what suits you, just remember what you have chosen when you test.
I usually decide on each class which is more suitable for me - either DB generated or my own.
Nhibernate should generate Id's for you. Id property of the entity must be protected. The best way is to use hilo