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Grails VS NHibernate

Compare Grails VS NHibernate and see what are their differences

Grails logo Grails

An Open Source, full stack, web application framework for the JVM

NHibernate logo NHibernate

The official NHibernate community site. Download NHibernate. Read blogs. Contribute to the NHibernate Wiki. Find reference documentation.
  • Grails Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-17
  • NHibernate Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-02-21

Grails features and specs

  • Rapid Development
    Grails promotes rapid development through its convention-over-configuration approach and powerful features, like scaffolding and GORM (Grails Object Relational Mapping), which speed up the coding process significantly.
  • Groovy Language Integration
    Being built on Groovy, a dynamic language for the Java platform, Grails provides the flexibility and expressiveness of Groovy while maintaining compatibility with Java libraries and tools.
  • Spring Boot Foundation
    Grails is built on top of Spring Boot, leveraging its robust dependency injection, security, and configuration management capabilities, which ensures the stability and scalability of applications.
  • Plugin Ecosystem
    Grails offers a rich ecosystem of plugins for extending the framework. This allows developers to easily integrate various functionalities without reinventing the wheel.
  • Convention-over-Configuration
    The framework emphasizes conventions for many aspects of the development process, reducing the need for extensive configuration and allowing developers to focus more on business logic.
  • Strong Community and Documentation
    Grails has a strong community and extensive documentation, which make it easier for developers to find solutions to problems, share knowledge, and get support.

Possible disadvantages of Grails

  • Learning Curve
    Despite its many conveniences, Grails has a steep learning curve, particularly for developers not familiar with Groovy or the underlying Spring framework.
  • Performance Overheads
    The abstraction layers and dynamic aspects of Groovy may introduce performance overheads, making Grails applications potentially slower than those built with more streamlined frameworks.
  • Limited Flexibility
    While Grails' conventions can be beneficial, they can also limit flexibility, forcing developers into certain patterns and practices even when they may not be ideal for all scenarios.
  • Less Popularity
    Compared to other frameworks like Spring Boot alone or Hibernate, Grails has a smaller market share, leading to fewer job opportunities and a smaller pool of resources.
  • Complex Debugging
    The dynamic nature of Groovy can sometimes make debugging more complex and challenging, especially for those accustomed to statically-typed languages like Java.
  • Dependency Management Issues
    Managing dependencies in Grails can occasionally be problematic, particularly when dealing with transitive dependencies or conflicts between plugins.

NHibernate features and specs

  • Rich ORM Features
    NHibernate provides comprehensive Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) capabilities, allowing developers to easily map .NET objects to database tables, manage relationships, and perform complex queries.
  • Database Independence
    NHibernate abstracts database interactions, enabling support for multiple databases with minimal changes to the data access layer. This is beneficial for applications that need to support different database platforms.
  • Advanced Querying
    Supports both criteria queries and HQL (Hibernate Query Language), which allow for complex and dynamic query capabilities, providing more flexibility in how data is retrieved.
  • Lazy Loading
    Offers lazy loading of data, improving application performance by only loading objects when they are specifically requested by the application logic.
  • Active Community and Extensions
    Having a strong community and many extensions, NHibernate provides a wealth of resources, plugins, and extensions to enhance its functionality and ease of use.

Possible disadvantages of NHibernate

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its comprehensive features and capabilities, NHibernate can be complex and may have a steep learning curve for new developers, requiring significant time to master.
  • Performance Overhead
    The abstraction layer introduced by NHibernate, while beneficial for flexibility and ease of development, can add performance overhead compared to direct database access.
  • Complexity in Mapping Configuration
    Configuring mappings of complex object models to database schemas can be challenging, and errors in configuration can lead to runtime issues.
  • Less Support for Modern .NET Features
    Compared to newer ORM tools like Entity Framework Core, NHibernate may lag in supporting some of the latest .NET features and syntactic sugar, affecting developer efficiency.
  • Documentation Quality
    While NHibernate has extensive functionality, the documentation can sometimes be lacking in clarity and completeness, posing difficulties for developers when troubleshooting issues.

Grails videos

BUYING MY SNEAKER GRAILS ON STOCKX!

More videos:

  • Review - TOP 5 SNEAKER GRAILS
  • Review - Top 5 Grails with Superpower Review | Berkfamily54comics

NHibernate videos

Introduction to NHibernate: Setting up your Mappings

More videos:

  • Review - Fluent NHibernate: Getting started w/ your first mappings
  • Review - ActiveCommerce + NHibernate + SPEAK Part 1

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Grails and NHibernate)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web Frameworks
88 88%
12% 12
Development
0 0%
100% 100
Python Web Framework
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Grails and NHibernate

Grails Reviews

17 Popular Java Frameworks for 2023: Pros, cons, and more
Although you have to write your code in Groovy, Grails works well with other Java-related technologies such as the Java Development Kit, Jakarta EE containers, Hibernate, and Spring. Under the hood, Grails is built on top of Spring Boot to make use of its productivity-friendly features like dependency injection. With Grails, you can achieve the same results with much less...
Source: raygun.com
10 Best Java Frameworks You Should Know
Grails is a web application framework developed using Apache Groovy Language. It is a Framework that follows the coding by convention method which provides a Standalone environment. Also, it supports instance development with no configuration required.

NHibernate Reviews

We have no reviews of NHibernate yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Grails should be more popular than NHibernate. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Grails mentions (6)

  • Mastering Node.js
    Trails is a modern web application framework. It builds on the pedigree of Rails and Grails to accelerate development by adhering to a straightforward, convention-based, API-driven design philosophy. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • RIFE2 web framework under development
    And frameworks like Grails build conventions and helpers on top of Spring. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Web app in Java with Template Engine
    I don't have any direct experience and am only suggesting it because you mentioned RoR...But Grails (https://grails.org/) is basically the JVM version of RoR (Groovy on Rails -> Grails). Source: over 2 years ago
  • Libraries other than Spring Boot for creating web APIs
    Grails - Spring under the hood. Much less boilerplate. Opinionated, which helps keep things consistent. Uses Spring-Security plugin for authentication. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • "get-it-done" MVC web framework like Django in Java?
    Also, Grails, which a Rails like framework build on Groovy, a JVM scripting language. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

NHibernate mentions (2)

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Grails and NHibernate, you can also consider the following products

Ruby on Rails - Ruby on Rails is an open source full-stack web application framework for the Ruby programming...

Beego - Beego Web is official blog and documentation website for beego app web framework

Django - The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines

Mikro orm - TypeScript ORM for Node.js based on Data Mapper, Unit of Work and Identity Map patterns.

Meteor - Meteor is a set of new technologies for building top-quality web apps in a fraction of the time.

Hibernate - Hibernate an open source Java persistence framework project.