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nhibernateidentityhilo

HiLo vs Identity?

This is the same question as: HiLo or identity?

Let's take the database of this site as an example.

Lets say that the site has the following tables:

  • Posts.
  • Votes.
  • Comments.

What is the best strategy to use for it:

Identity - which is more common.

OR

HiLo - which give best performance.

Edit: if HiLo is the best, how the structure of the DB would be?

Solution

  • Not only HiLo gives better perfomance pretty much always, but it also preserves the Unit of Work by avoiding ALL writes until session flush.

    Being "more common" (?) doesn't seem like an objective technical advantage.

    I recommend that you read http://fabiomaulo.blogspot.com/2009/02/nh210-generators-behavior-explained.html for a detailed explanation of the downsides of choosing identity.