.NET Enterprise Library v2.0

  • Article

Last week, the Patterns & Practices team released v2.0 of Enterprise Library – a library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application blocks are a type of guidance, provided as source code that can be used “as is”, extended or modified by developers to use on enterprise development projects. This release includes six application blocks (Caching, Cryptography, Data Access, Exception Handling, Logging and Security). Enterprise Library has been redesigned to use the new capabilities of .NET Framework 2.0.

Highlights of this release include:

  • support for new features in VS 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0
  • improvements based on customer feedback including configurable instrumentation, improvements to the flexibility and performance of the logging application block, and support for more database types through the data access application block
  • make developers more productive by simplifying and accelerating common development scenarios

The original releases of Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 1.1 has been an unprecedented hit with developers. One year and 200,000 downloads later, it’s been used in countless customer applications, partner offerings and ISV applications. Many internal Microsoft applications use it. The Enterprise Library Community now has over 15,000 members sharing questions, answers and code samples around their experiences using Enterprise Library. Thanks to the community members who have played an important role in the development of this release by providing the requirements and feedback on CTP builds.

 

Like the previous releases of Enterprise Library, the new .NET Framework 2.0 release is implemented in C#. However Enterprise Library is great to use from any .NET language, and all documentation and sample applications are provided in both VB.NET and C# and it is possible to extend the library from either language. In addition, the patterns & practices team plans to provide end-to-end reference applications demonstrating the use of Enterprise Library from both VB.NET and C#.

Namaste!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 27, 2006
    Hello Mr.Soma,

    Since I have read on you on Microsoft.com at the time of Windows 2000 release, I wanted to write you and appreciate the hard work!

    Don't know weather you will get time to read my comments or not but just trying to say "hi".

    I'm sure that Enterprise Library will help the developers to complete their projects faster.

    Yaseen
    Web Developer
    Saudi Arabia
  • Anonymous
    January 27, 2006
    Hi Yaseen,

    Thanks for the kind words. Best regards.
  • Anonymous
    January 27, 2006
    Dear Sir,

    Will this end-to-end reference application will be also provided for asp.net, it is very important for us.

    thanks & regards

    Khuzema
  • Anonymous
    January 28, 2006
    Hi Khuzema,

    The patterns & practices team is in the processes of developing the end-to-end reference implementation that will demonstrate how to use entlib in a product application. The project is just getting started. The best way to stay connected to their progress is to connect with Tom Hollander through his blog at blogs.msdn.com/tomholl.

    Regards, Somasegar.
  • Anonymous
    January 29, 2006
    Hello Soma,

    EntLib is a good stuff. I use it in many apps I deliver for my clients.

    My feedback is that Tom Hollander's team need to think more on backward compatibility of EntLib versions. Also when any of the appBlocks being built inside .NET Base Class Library (such as Configuration App Block).

    Btw, what other app Blocks will go into .NET BCL? :)

    BR,
    Norman
  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2006
    Hi Norman -

    Tom Hollander here (Product Manager for Enterprise Library). Thanks for your feedback and I'm glad you find EntLib useful.

    We understand how important backwards compatibility is, and we work hard to achieve this - but being a guidance deliverable that is released very rapidly, we aren't able to offer the same guarantees as you would expect in the platform or products. The move between .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 was a bigger change than most, and we needed to make a few breaking changes to support the new best practices of .NET 2.0.

    We also aspire to moving much of the functionality of our blocks into future versions of the platform. The Configuration Application Block is a great example of this, plus much of the Security Application Block is now much smaller due to enhancements in the platform. However given that the development lifecycle of the .NET Framework is generally a lot longer than guidance deliverables like Enterprise Library, it isn't always possible for us to feed the requirements back to the product group at the right time. That said, we are continuing to get better at this and we hope that future versions of the platform provide even more functionality from EntLib and other p&p deliverables.

    Thanks
    Tom Hollander








  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    As I have seen on EntLib website, Express editions are not supported. Am I right?
  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2006
    Hi Dragan,

    Since EntLib is targeted at professional developers, we don't support this w/Express editions.

    Regards, Somasegar.