While the easiest way to prepare the application to be profiled is to just call NHibernateProfiler.Initialize(), this is often not a desirable way of doing things, since adding / removing the profiler requires changing the application code.

Therefore, I also made it possible to configure the application without this explicit initialization approach. The method of doing so is:

• Create a log4net.config file with the following content to log to a live instance of the  NHibernate Profiler:
  

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
  <log4net>
    <appender name="NHProfAppender"
        type="HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernate.NHProfAppender, 
        HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernateLog4Net">
      <sink value="tcp://127.0.0.1:22897" />
    </appender>
    <logger name="HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernate.NHProfAppender.Setup">
      <appender-ref ref="NHProfAppender"/>
    </logger>
  </log4net>

   

• Create a log4net.config file with the following content to log to a file that can be later loaded into the NHibernate Profiler:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
  <log4net>
    <appender name="NHProfAppender"
        type="HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernate.NHProfOfflineAppender, 
        HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernateLog4Net" >
      <file value="nhprof_output.nhprof" />
    </appender>
    <logger name="HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernate.NHProfAppender.Setup">
      <appender-ref ref="NHProfAppender"/>
    </logger>
  </log4net>
  

• Add a reference to the following dll's:
  • HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.dll  
  • HibernatingRhinos.Profiler.Appender.NHibernateLog4Net.dll
• In the application startup, call:

log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure(new FileInfo("/path/to/log4net.config")); 

The logger exposes the following properties to allow to configure its behavior (mostly regarding performance):

• Stop doing fixups for runtime generated code stack traces.

  <dotNotFixDynamicProxyStackTrace value="true"/>

• Stop capturing all stack traces.

  <skipCapturingStackTraces value="true"/>