Chapter 3. ISessionFactory Configuration

Because NHibernate is designed to operate in many different environments, there are a large number of configuration parameters. Fortunately, most have sensible default values and NHibernate is distributed with an example App.config file (found in src\NHibernate.Test) that shows the various options. You usually only have to put that file in your project and customize it.

3.1. Programmatic Configuration

An instance of NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration represents an entire set of mappings of an application's .NET types to a SQL database. The Configuration is used to build an (immutable) ISessionFactory. The mappings are compiled from various XML mapping files.

You may obtain a Configuration instance by instantiating it directly. Here is an example of setting up a datastore from mappings defined in two XML configuration files:

Configuration cfg = new Configuration()
    .AddFile("Item.hbm.xml")
    .AddFile("Bid.hbm.xml");

An alternative (sometimes better) way is to let NHibernate load a mapping file from an embedded resource:

Configuration cfg = new Configuration()
    .AddClass(typeof(NHibernate.Auction.Item))
    .AddClass(typeof(NHibernate.Auction.Bid));

Then NHibernate will look for mapping files named NHibernate.Auction.Item.hbm.xml and NHibernate.Auction.Bid.hbm.xml embedded as resources in the assembly that the types are contained in. This approach eliminates any hardcoded filenames.

Another alternative (probably the best) way is to let NHibernate load all of the mapping files contained in an Assembly:

Configuration cfg = new Configuration()
    .AddAssembly( "NHibernate.Auction" );

Then NHibernate will look through the assembly for any resources that end with .hbm.xml. This approach eliminates any hardcoded filenames and ensures the mapping files in the assembly get added.

If a tool like Visual Studio .NET or NAnt is used to build the assembly, then make sure that the .hbm.xml files are compiled into the assembly as Embedded Resources.

A Configuration also specifies various optional properties:

var props = new Dictionary<string, string>();
...
Configuration cfg = new Configuration()
    .AddClass(typeof(NHibernate.Auction.Item))
    .AddClass(typeof(NHibernate.Auction.Bind))
    .SetProperties(props);

A Configuration is intended as a configuration-time object, to be discarded once an ISessionFactory is built.

3.2. Obtaining an ISessionFactory

When all mappings have been parsed by the Configuration, the application must obtain a factory for ISession instances. This factory is intended to be shared by all application threads:

ISessionFactory sessions = cfg.BuildSessionFactory();

However, NHibernate does allow your application to instantiate more than one ISessionFactory. This is useful if you are using more than one database.

3.3. User provided ADO.NET connection

An ISessionFactory may open an ISession on a user-provided ADO.NET connection. This design choice frees the application to obtain ADO.NET connections wherever it pleases:

var conn = myApp.GetOpenConnection();
var session = sessions.OpenSession(conn);

// do some data access work

The application must be careful not to open two concurrent ISessions on the same ADO.NET connection!

3.4. NHibernate provided ADO.NET connection

Alternatively, you can have the ISessionFactory open connections for you. The ISessionFactory must be provided with ADO.NET connection properties in one of the following ways:

  1. Pass an instance of IDictionary mapping property names to property values to Configuration.SetProperties().

  2. Include <property> elements in a configuration section in the application configuration file. The section should be named hibernate-configuration and its handler set to NHibernate.Cfg.ConfigurationSectionHandler. The XML namespace of the section should be set to urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2.

  3. Include <property> elements in hibernate.cfg.xml (discussed later).

If you take this approach, opening an ISession is as simple as:

ISession session = sessions.OpenSession(); // open a new Session
// do some data access work, an ADO.NET connection will be used on demand

All NHibernate property names and semantics are defined on the class NHibernate.Cfg.Environment. We will now describe the most important settings for ADO.NET connection configuration.

NHibernate will obtain (and pool) connections using an ADO.NET data provider if you set the following properties:

Table 3.1. NHibernate ADO.NET Properties

Property namePurpose
connection.provider The type of a custom IConnectionProvider implementation.

eg. full.classname.of.ConnectionProvider if the Provider is built into NHibernate, or full.classname.of.ConnectionProvider, assembly if using an implementation of IConnectionProvider not included in NHibernate. The default is NHibernate.Connection.DriverConnectionProvider.

connection.driver_class The type of a custom IDriver, if using DriverConnectionProvider.

eg. full.classname.of.Driver if the Driver is built into NHibernate, or full.classname.of.Driver, assembly if using an implementation of IDriver not included in NHibernate.

This is usually not needed, most of the time the dialect will take care of setting the IDriver using a sensible default. See the API documentation of the specific dialect for the defaults.

connection.connection_string Connection string to use to obtain the connection.
connection.connection_string_name The name of the connection string (defined in <connectionStrings> configuration file element) to use to obtain the connection.
connection.isolation Set the ADO.NET transaction isolation level. Check System.Data.IsolationLevel for meaningful values and the database's documentation to ensure that level is supported.

eg. Chaos | ReadCommitted | ReadUncommitted | RepeatableRead | Serializable | Unspecified

connection.release_mode Specify when NHibernate should release ADO.NET connections. See Section 12.7, “Connection Release Modes”.

eg. auto (default) | on_close | after_transaction

Note that for ISessions obtained through ISessionFactory.GetCurrentSession, the ICurrentSessionContext implementation configured for use may control the connection release mode for those ISessions. See Section 2.3, “Contextual Sessions”.

prepare_sql Specify to prepare DbCommands generated by NHibernate. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

command_timeout Specify the default timeout in seconds of DbCommands generated by NHibernate. Negative values disable it.

eg. 30

adonet.batch_size Specify the batch size to use when batching update statements. Setting this to 0 (the default) disables the functionality. See Section 21.6, “Batch updates”.

eg. 20

order_inserts Enable ordering of insert statements for the purpose of more efficient batching. Defaults to true if batching is enabled, false otherwise.

eg. true | false

order_updates Enable ordering of update statements for the purpose of more efficient batching. Defaults to true if batching is enabled, false otherwise.

eg. true | false

adonet.batch_versioned_data If batching is enabled, specify that versioned data can also be batched. Requires a dialect which batcher correctly returns rows count. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

adonet.factory_class The class name of a IBatcherFactory implementation.

This is usually not needed, most of the time the driver will take care of setting the IBatcherFactory using a sensible default according to the database capabilities.

eg. classname.of.BatcherFactory, assembly

adonet.wrap_result_sets Some database vendor data reader implementation have inefficient columnName-to-columnIndex resolution. Enabling this setting allows to wrap them in a data reader that will cache those resolutions. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

This is an example of how to specify the database connection properties inside a web.config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="hibernate-configuration"
        type="NHibernate.Cfg.ConfigurationSectionHandler, NHibernate" />
  </configSections>

  <hibernate-configuration xmlns="urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2">
    <session-factory>
      <property name="dialect">NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2012Dialect</property>
      <property name="connection.connection_string">
        Server=(local);initial catalog=theDb;Integrated Security=SSPI
      </property>
      <property name="connection.isolation">ReadCommitted</property>
    </session-factory>
  </hibernate-configuration>

  <!-- other app specific config follows -->
</configuration>

NHibernate relies on the ADO.NET data provider implementation of connection pooling.

You may define your own plug-in strategy for obtaining ADO.NET connections by implementing the interface NHibernate.Connection.IConnectionProvider. You may select a custom implementation by setting connection.provider.

3.5. Optional configuration properties

There are a number of other properties that control the behaviour of NHibernate at runtime. All are optional and have reasonable default values.

Table 3.2. NHibernate Configuration Properties

Property namePurpose
dialect The class name of a NHibernate Dialect - enables certain platform dependent features. See Section 3.5.1, “SQL Dialects”.

eg. full.classname.of.Dialect, assembly

default_catalog Qualify unqualified table names with the given catalog name in generated SQL.

eg. CATALOG_NAME

default_schema Qualify unqualified table names with the given schema/table-space in generated SQL.

eg. SCHEMA_NAME

max_fetch_depth Set a maximum "depth" for the outer join fetch tree for single-ended associations (one-to-one, many-to-one). A 0 disables default outer join fetching.

eg. recommended values between 0 and 3

cache.use_second_level_cache Enable the second level cache. Requires specifying a cache.provider_class. See Chapter 27, NHibernate.Caches. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

cache.provider_class The class name of a ICacheProvider implementation.

eg. classname.of.CacheProvider, assembly

cache.use_minimal_puts Optimize second-level cache operation to minimize writes, at the cost of more frequent reads (useful for clustered caches). Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

cache.use_query_cache Enable the query cache, individual queries still have to be set cacheable. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

cache.query_cache_factory The class name of a custom IQueryCacheFactory implementation. Defaults to the built-in StandardQueryCacheFactory.

eg. classname.of.QueryCacheFactory, assembly

cache.region_prefix A prefix to use for second-level cache region names.

eg. prefix

cache.default_expiration The default expiration delay in seconds for cached entries, for providers supporting this setting.

eg. 300

query.substitutions Mapping from tokens in NHibernate queries to SQL tokens (tokens might be function or literal names, for example).

eg. hqlLiteral=SQL_LITERAL, hqlFunction=SQLFUNC

query.default_cast_length Set the default length used in casting when the target type is length bound and does not specify it. Defaults to 4000, automatically trimmed down according to dialect type registration.

eg. 255

query.default_cast_precision Set the default precision used in casting when the target type is decimal and does not specify it. Defaults to 28, automatically trimmed down according to dialect type registration.

eg. 19

query.default_cast_scale Set the default scale used in casting when the target type is decimal and does not specify it. Defaults to 10, automatically trimmed down according to dialect type registration.

eg. 5

query.startup_check Should named queries be checked during startup (the default is enabled).

eg. true | false

query.factory_class The class name of a custom IQueryTranslatorFactory implementation (HQL query parser factory). Defaults to the built-in ASTQueryTranslatorFactory.

eg. classname.of.QueryTranslatorFactory, assembly

query.linq_provider_class The class name of a custom INhQueryProvider implementation (LINQ provider). Defaults to the built-in DefaultQueryProvider.

eg. classname.of.LinqProvider, assembly

query.query_model_rewriter_factory The class name of a custom IQueryModelRewriterFactory implementation (LINQ query model rewriter factory). Defaults to null (no rewriter).

eg. classname.of.QueryModelRewriterFactory, assembly

linqtohql.generatorsregistry The class name of a custom ILinqToHqlGeneratorsRegistry implementation. Defaults to the built-in DefaultLinqToHqlGeneratorsRegistry. See Section 18.8.2, “Adding a custom generator”.

eg. classname.of.LinqToHqlGeneratorsRegistry, assembly

sql_exception_converter The class name of a custom ISQLExceptionConverter implementation. Defaults to Dialect.BuildSQLExceptionConverter().

eg. classname.of.SQLExceptionConverter, assembly

show_sql Write all SQL statements to console. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

format_sql Log formatted SQL. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

use_sql_comments Generate SQL with comments. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

hbm2ddl.auto Automatically export schema DDL to the database when the ISessionFactory is created. With create-drop, the database schema will be dropped when the ISessionFactory is closed explicitly.

eg. create | create-drop

hbm2ddl.keywords Automatically import reserved/keywords from the database when the ISessionFactory is created.

none : disable any operation regarding RDBMS KeyWords (the default).

keywords : imports all RDBMS KeyWords where the Dialect can provide the implementation of IDataBaseSchema.

auto-quote : imports all RDBMS KeyWords and auto-quote all table-names/column-names.

eg. none | keywords | auto-quote

use_proxy_validator Enables or disables validation of interfaces or classes specified as proxies. Enabled by default.

eg. true | false

proxyfactory.factory_class The class name of a custom IProxyFactoryFactory implementation. Defaults to the built-in StaticProxyFactoryFactory.

eg. classname.of.ProxyFactoryFactory, assembly

collectiontype.factory_class The class name of a custom ICollectionTypeFactory implementation. Defaults to the built-in DefaultCollectionTypeFactory.

eg. classname.of.CollectionTypeFactory, assembly

transaction.factory_class The class name of a custom ITransactionFactory implementation. Defaults to the built-in AdoNetWithSystemTransactionFactory.

eg. classname.of.TransactionFactory, assembly

transaction.use_connection_on_system_prepare When a system transaction is being prepared, is using connection during this process enabled?

Default is true, for supporting FlushMode.Commit with transaction factories supporting system transactions. But this requires enlisting additional connections, retaining disposed sessions and their connections until transaction end, and may trigger undesired transaction promotions to distributed.

Set to false for disabling using connections from system transaction preparation, while still benefiting from FlushMode.Auto on querying.

See Section 12.8, “Transaction scopes (System.Transactions)”.

eg. true | false

transaction.system_completion_lock_timeout Timeout duration in milliseconds for the system transaction completion lock.

When a system transaction completes, it may have its completion events running on concurrent threads, after scope disposal. This occurs when the transaction is distributed. This notably concerns ISessionImplementor.AfterTransactionCompletion(bool, ITransaction). NHibernate protects the session from being concurrently used by the code following the scope disposal with a lock. To prevent any application freeze, this lock has a default timeout of five seconds. If the application appears to require longer (!) running transaction completion events, this setting allows to raise this timeout. -1 disables the timeout.

eg. 10000

default_flush_mode The default FlushMode, Auto when not specified. See Section 10.6, “Flush”.

eg. Manual | Commit | Auto | Always

default_batch_fetch_size The default batch fetch size to use when lazily loading an entity or collection. Defaults to 1. See Section 21.1.5, “Using batch fetching”.

eg. 20

current_session_context_class The class name of an ICurrentSessionContext implementation. See Section 2.3, “Contextual Sessions”.

eg. classname.of.CurrentSessionContext, assembly

id.optimizer.pooled.prefer_lo When using an enhanced id generator and pooled optimizers (see Section 5.1.5.9, “Enhanced identifier generators”), prefer interpreting the database value as the lower (lo) boundary. The default is to interpret it as the high boundary.

eg. true | false

generate_statistics Enable statistics collection within ISessionFactory.Statistics property. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

track_session_id Set whether the session id should be tracked in logs or not. When true, each session will have an unique Guid that can be retrieved with ISessionImplementor.SessionId, otherwise ISessionImplementor.SessionId will be Guid.Empty.

Session id is used for logging purpose and can also be retrieved on the static property NHibernate.Impl.SessionIdLoggingContext.SessionId, when tracking is enabled.

Disabling tracking by setting track_session_id to false increases performances. Default is true.

eg. true | false

sql_types.keep_datetime Since NHibernate v5.0 and if the dialect supports it, DbType.DateTime2 is used instead of DbType.DateTime. This may be disabled by setting sql_types.keep_datetime to true. Defaults to false.

eg. true | false

firebird.disable_parameter_casting

Firebird with FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient may be unable to determine the type of parameters in many circumstances, unless they are explicitly casted in the SQL query. To avoid this trouble, the NHibernate FirebirdClientDriver parses SQL commands for detecting parameters in them and adding an explicit SQL cast around parameters which may trigger the issue.

Defaults to false. For disabling this behavior, set this setting to true.

eg. true | false

oracle.use_n_prefixed_types_for_unicode

Oracle has a dual Unicode support model.

Either the whole database use an Unicode encoding, and then all string types will be Unicode. In such case, Unicode strings should be mapped to non N prefixed types, such as Varchar2. This is the default.

Or N prefixed types such as NVarchar2 are to be used for Unicode strings, the others type are using a non Unicode encoding. In such case this setting needs to be set to true.

See Implementing a Unicode Solution in the Database. This setting applies only to Oracle dialects and ODP.Net managed or unmanaged driver.

eg. true | false

odbc.explicit_datetime_scale This may need to be set to 3 if you are using the OdbcDriver with MS SQL Server 2008+.

This is intended to work around issues like:

System.Data.Odbc.OdbcException :
ERROR [22008]
[Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0]
Datetime field overflow. Fractional second
precision exceeds the scale specified
in the parameter binding.

eg. 3

nhibernate-logger The class name of an ILoggerFactory implementation. It allows using another logger than log4net.

The default is not defined, which causes NHibernate to search for log4net assembly. If this search succeeds, NHibernate will log with log4net. Otherwise, its internal logging will be disabled.

This is a very special system-level property. It can only be set through an appSetting named nhibernate-logger in the application configuration file. It cannot be set neither with NHibernate.Cfg.Environment class, nor be defined in the <hibernate-configuration> section of the application configuration file, nor supplied by using Configuration.SetProperties, nor set in the hibernate.cfg.xml configuration file.

Alternatively to using the setting, a logger factory can be programmatically supplied by using NHibernateLogger.SetLoggersFactory.

eg. classname.of.LoggerFactory, assembly

3.5.1. SQL Dialects

You should always set the dialect property to the correct NHibernate.Dialect.Dialect subclass for your database. This is not strictly essential unless you wish to use native or sequence primary key generation or pessimistic locking (with, eg. ISession.Lock() or IQuery.SetLockMode()). However, if you specify a dialect, NHibernate will use sensible defaults for some of the other properties listed above, saving you the effort of specifying them manually.

Table 3.3. NHibernate SQL Dialects (dialect)

RDBMSDialectRemarks
DB2NHibernate.Dialect.DB2Dialect 
DB2 for iSeries (OS/400)NHibernate.Dialect.DB2400Dialect 
FirebirdNHibernate.Dialect.FirebirdDialect Set driver_class to NHibernate.Driver.FirebirdClientDriver for Firebird ADO.NET provider 2.0.
InformixNHibernate.Dialect.InformixDialect 
Informix 9.40NHibernate.Dialect.InformixDialect0940 
Informix 10.00NHibernate.Dialect.InformixDialect1000 
IngresNHibernate.Dialect.IngresDialect 
Ingres 9NHibernate.Dialect.Ingres9Dialect 
Microsoft SQL Server 7NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql7Dialect 
Microsoft SQL Server 2000NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2000Dialect 
Microsoft SQL Server 2005NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2005Dialect 
Microsoft SQL Server 2008NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2008Dialect 
Microsoft SQL Azure Server 2008NHibernate.Dialect.MsSqlAzure2008Dialect 
Microsoft SQL Server 2012NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2012Dialect 
Microsoft SQL Server Compact EditionNHibernate.Dialect.MsSqlCeDialect 
Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 4.0NHibernate.Dialect.MsSqlCe40Dialect 
MySQL 3 or 4NHibernate.Dialect.MySQLDialect 
MySQL 5NHibernate.Dialect.MySQL5Dialect 
MySQL 5 Inno DBNHibernate.Dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect 
MySQL 5.5NHibernate.Dialect.MySQL55Dialect 
MySQL 5.5 Inno DBNHibernate.Dialect.MySQL55InnoDBDialect 
OracleNHibernate.Dialect.Oracle8iDialect 
Oracle 9iNHibernate.Dialect.Oracle9iDialect 
Oracle 10g, Oracle 11gNHibernate.Dialect.Oracle10gDialect 
Oracle 12cNHibernate.Dialect.Oracle12cDialect 
PostgreSQLNHibernate.Dialect.PostgreSQLDialect 
PostgreSQLNHibernate.Dialect.PostgreSQLDialect 
PostgreSQL 8.1NHibernate.Dialect.PostgreSQL81Dialect This dialect supports FOR UPDATE NOWAIT available in PostgreSQL 8.1.
PostgreSQL 8.2NHibernate.Dialect.PostgreSQL82Dialect This dialect supports IF EXISTS keyword in DROP TABLE and DROP SEQUENCE available in PostgreSQL 8.2.
PostgreSQL 8.3NHibernate.Dialect.PostgreSQL83Dialect This dialect supports XML type.
SQLiteNHibernate.Dialect.SQLiteDialect Set driver_class to NHibernate.Driver.SQLite20Driver for System.Data.SQLite provider for .NET 2.0.

Due to the behavior of System.Data.SQLite with DateTime, consider using DateTimeFormatString=yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.FFFFFFF; in the SQLite connection string for preventing undesired time shifts with its default configuration.

Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere 9NHibernate.Dialect.SybaseASA9Dialect 
Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 15NHibernate.Dialect.SybaseASE15Dialect 
Sybase SQL Anywhere 10NHibernate.Dialect.SybaseSQLAnywhere10Dialect 
Sybase SQL Anywhere 11NHibernate.Dialect.SybaseSQLAnywhere11Dialect 
Sybase SQL Anywhere 12NHibernate.Dialect.SybaseSQLAnywhere12Dialect 

Additional dialects may be available in the NHibernate.Dialect namespace.

3.5.2. Outer Join Fetching

If your database supports ANSI or Oracle style outer joins, outer join fetching might increase performance by limiting the number of round trips to and from the database (at the cost of possibly more work performed by the database itself). Outer join fetching allows a graph of objects connected by many-to-one, one-to-many or one-to-one associations to be retrieved in a single SQL SELECT.

By default, the fetched graph when loading an objects ends at leaf objects, collections, objects with proxies, or where circularities occur.

For a particular association, fetching may be configured (and the default behaviour overridden) by setting the fetch attribute in the XML mapping.

Outer join fetching may be disabled globally by setting the property max_fetch_depth to 0. A setting of 1 or higher enables outer join fetching for one-to-one and many-to-one associations which have been mapped with fetch="join".

See Section 21.1, “Fetching strategies” for more information.

In NHibernate 1.0, outer-join attribute could be used to achieve a similar effect. This attribute is now deprecated in favor of fetch.

3.5.3. Custom ICacheProvider

You may integrate a process-level (or clustered) second-level cache system by implementing the interface NHibernate.Cache.ICacheProvider. You may select the custom implementation by setting cache.provider_class. See the Section 21.2, “The Second Level Cache” for more details.

3.5.4. Query Language Substitution

You may define new NHibernate query tokens using query.substitutions. For example:

query.substitutions true=1, false=0

would cause the tokens true and false to be translated to integer literals in the generated SQL.

query.substitutions toLowercase=LOWER

would allow you to rename the SQL LOWER function.

3.5.5. System level optional properties

Some properties are system-level properties. They can only be set manually by setting static properties of NHibernate.Cfg.Environment class or be defined in the <hibernate-configuration> section of the application configuration file, as direct sub-elements. These properties can neither be set using Configuration.SetProperties or the hibernate.cfg.xml configuration file, nor be set as <session-factory> properties.

Table 3.4. NHibernate system level properties

Property namePurpose
bytecode-provider

Specifies the bytecode provider to use to optimize the use of reflection in NHibernate. Use null to disable the optimization completely, lcg to use built-in lightweight code generation, or the assembly qualified class name of a custom IBytecodeProvider implementation. Defaults to lcg.

<bytecode-provider
    type="lcg|null|className" />

You can also set this property by code by setting NHibernate.Cfg.Environment.BytecodeProvider before creating any NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration instance.

objects-factory

Specifies a custom objects factory to use for instantiating NHibernate dependencies. Use the assembly qualified class name of a custom IObjectsFactory implementation.

<bytecode-provider
    type="className" />

You can also set this property by code by setting NHibernate.Cfg.Environment.ObjectsFactory before creating any NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration instance.

reflection-optimizer

Enables use of a runtime-generated class to set or get properties of an entity or component instead of using runtime reflection. The use of the reflection optimizer inflicts a certain startup cost on the application but should lead to better performance in the long run. Defaults to true.

<reflection-optimizer
    use="true|false"/>

You can also set this property by code by setting NHibernate.Cfg.Environment.UseReflectionOptimizer before creating any NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration instance.

3.6. Logging

NHibernate logs various events using Apache log4net.

You may download log4net from https://logging.apache.org/log4net/, or install it with NuGet. To use log4net you will need a log4net configuration section in the application configuration file. An example of the configuration section is distributed with NHibernate in the src/NHibernate.Test project.

We strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with NHibernate's log messages. A lot of work has been put into making the NHibernate log as detailed as possible, without making it unreadable. It is an essential troubleshooting device. Also don't forget to enable SQL logging as described above (show_sql), it is your first step when looking for performance problems.

3.7. Implementing an INamingStrategy

The interface NHibernate.Cfg.INamingStrategy allows you to specify a "naming standard" for database objects and schema elements.

You may provide rules for automatically generating database identifiers from .NET identifiers or for processing "logical" column and table names given in the mapping file into "physical" table and column names. This feature helps reduce the verbosity of the mapping document, eliminating repetitive noise (TBL_ prefixes, for example). The default strategy used by NHibernate is quite minimal.

You may specify a different strategy by calling Configuration.SetNamingStrategy() before adding mappings:

ISessionFactory sf = new Configuration()
    .SetNamingStrategy(ImprovedNamingStrategy.Instance)
    .AddFile("Item.hbm.xml")
    .AddFile("Bid.hbm.xml")
    .BuildSessionFactory();

NHibernate.Cfg.ImprovedNamingStrategy is a built-in strategy that might be a useful starting point for some applications.

3.8. XML Configuration File

An alternative approach is to specify a full configuration in a file named hibernate.cfg.xml. This file can be used as a replacement for the <hibernate-configuration> sections of the application configuration file.

The XML configuration file is by default expected to be in your application directory. Here is an example:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<hibernate-configuration xmlns="urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2">

  <!-- an ISessionFactory instance -->
  <session-factory>

    <!-- properties -->
    <property name="connection.connection_string">
      Server=localhost;initial catalog=nhibernate;User Id=;Password=
    </property>
    <property name="show_sql">false</property>
    <property name="dialect">NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2012Dialect</property>

    <!-- mapping files -->
    <mapping resource="NHibernate.Auction.Item.hbm.xml" assembly="NHibernate.Auction" />
    <mapping resource="NHibernate.Auction.Bid.hbm.xml" assembly="NHibernate.Auction" />

  </session-factory>

</hibernate-configuration>

Configuring NHibernate is then as simple as

ISessionFactory sf = new Configuration().Configure().BuildSessionFactory();

You can pick a different XML configuration file using

ISessionFactory sf = new Configuration()
    .Configure("/path/to/config.cfg.xml")
    .BuildSessionFactory();