MS Entity Framework VS NHibernate and its derived contribs (FluentNHibernate, Linq for NHibernate)

Question

I just read this article about the Entity Framework 4 (actually version 2).

Entity Framework seems to offer a huge improvement over its first release. Thus, I have never

Answer 1

Take this with a grain of salt. I am not any kind of authority on ORM tools, but here it goes...

One of the biggest benefits that i see in EF is the GUI for mapping. IMO, this saves a lot of time, but is probably the reason why EF XML mappings are so verbose. They're not made to be dealt with manually, unfortunately. Whether it will change or not i don't know. What i do know is that the GUI that EF provides used to be very flaky in previous releases. And i still hear about people complaining that it isn't scaling well, especially on larger and more complex schemas where it just misses things and you end up messing with the mappings directly. My opinion is that XML maps will become less verbose as EF matures. You also have the fluent mapping support in EF, which is also helpful. Finally, another big thing is the ability to change code templates that EF generates, that is if you favor database-driven design instead of design-first approach.

Another benefit is that it comes from Microsoft and they have enough dough to make this a really dope framework. It has grown tremendously in the past few years. I think it'll be on the same ground with NHibernate in a little over a year. As of now, I think NHibernate is a better choice. It's more stable and mature. Relative easy to configure and most importantly a better performer. I think if you design wisely, a move from one to another is going to be a piece of cake.

EF is just an abstraction. I believe there are providers for Oracle, so i don't see why there couldn't be more added as it grows.