NHibernate key features:
- Natural programming model - NHibernate supports natural OO idiom; inheritance, polymorphism, composition and the .NET collections framework
- Native .NET - NHibernate API uses .NET conventions and idioms.
- Support for fine-grained object models - a rich variety of mappings for collections and dependent objects
- No build-time bytecode enhancement - there's no extra code generation or bytecode processing steps in your build procedure
- The query options - NHibernate addresses both sides of the problem; not only how to get objects into the database, but also how to get them out again
- Support for "conversations" - NHibernate supports long-lived persistence contexts, detach/reattach of objects, and takes care of optimistic locking automatically
- Free/open source - NHibernate is licensed under the LGPL (Lesser GNU Public License)
