Devart Releases New Visual Model Designer for NHibernate

Devart, a provider of development and database data-access tools, has released Entity Developer 4.0, the latest version of its visual model designer and code-generation tool. Entity Developer 4.0 features a new edition of the product, Entity Developer for NHibernate, as well as editions for Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL.

Entity Developer for NHibernate supports Model-First, Database-First, and mixed approaches to designing models. Entity Developer allows generating NHibernate models from existing databases or creating a new model from scratch, and then creating a database, based on the model. It provides flexible naming rules for generating class and property names from the names of the database tables and columns as well as Update From Database and Update To Database wizards that allow you to synchronize your model and database in any directions at any moment. Entity Developer also allows importing of existing NHibernate models and can import existing *.hbm.xml mapping files, mapping from the assembly and *.exe file resources, or import models from Visual Studio projects.

Entity Developer for NHibernate's designer supports almost all features of NHibernate mapping, including components, most kinds of associations, and all types of inheritance-mapping strategies. Most frequently used mapping parameters are set in convenient and easy-to-understand object editor dialogs. You don't need to write XML mapping code manually. You can design NHibernate models both in Visual Studio and in the standalone Entity Developer application

Entity Developer also provides code generation, which lets you use templates to generate source code for ORM models. The code generator is based on templates, written in T4-like template language. It includes pre-defined templates and also allows you to create your own templates. You can use the code generator's settings to customize some aspects of code generation. Entity Developer for NHibernate also includes a mapping generator that can generate both XML and fluent mapping.

Pricing for Entity Developer 4.0 is as follows:

Entity Developer for NHibernate: $199.95
Entity Developer for Entity Framework: $199.95
Entity Developer for LINQ to SQL: $99.95

There's also a free Express Edition of Entity Developer, which is limited to 10 entities in the project and does not allow customization of code templates.

You can find more information about Entity Developer 4.0 here.