This book covers NHibernate, the .NET port of the popular Hibernate Object Relational Mapper. (An ORM helps the developer save and retrieve objects from a database.) It's written in Packt's 'Cookbook' style, which means it's really a series of how-to templates that guide the reader through some goal-centric activity.

The book is deceptive in that there's really no lengthy text sections that explain the basics of the tool. At first glance, you might think this means there's no explanation for how things work, but that would be wrong! The truth is, there is plenty of good NHibernate theory and explanation, it's just that it's contained within the "How it Works" and "There's More" section of each instructional section. For this reason, I'd urge bookshelf browsers to be sure to read one topic through front-to-back thoroughly, to get a feel for how the book presents theory as well as practical, hands-on-the-keyboard instruction.

If you are a .Net developer who writes non-trivial applications with a database backend, you probably should give NHibernate (and this book) a look. This book can serve as both an introduction to NHibernate and a reference material for a long time to come as you master the recipes over time.