Microsoft Enterprise Library
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The Microsoft Enterprise Library is a set of tools and programming libraries for the Microsoft .NET Framework. It provides an API to facilitate best practices in core areas of programming including data access, security, logging, exception handling and others. Enterprise Library is provided as source code, which can be freely used and customized by developers for their own purposes.
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[edit] Benefits
- Improved Productivity: Each of the Application Blocks provides several interfaces meant to satisfy common application concerns.
- Configuration Driven Design: Many technical decisions about the application behaviour can be delayed until configuration time of the application. For instance, if an application does not properly handle an exception, instead of adding another exception handler to the code, an administrator can configure an additional exception handling policy.
- Improved Testability: Many application areas can be reconfigured to improve testing of the application in isolation.
[edit] Application Blocks
The Application Blocks in Enterprise Library are designed to be as agnostic as possible to the application architecture, for example the Logging Application Block may be used equally in a web, smart client or service-oriented application. The patterns and practices team also produces more specialized Application Blocks that are not included in Enterprise Library, such as the User Interface Process Application Block, Aggregator Application Block, Updater Application Block and the Composite UI Application Block.
The patterns and practices team produces a number of other deliverables that leverage Enterprise Library Application Blocks. These include the Web Service Software Factory and Smart Client Software Factory.
[edit] Utilities
In addition to the Application Blocks, the standard Microsoft distribution of the Enterprise library includes:
- Configuration Console: to visually add Application Block to an applications configuration.
- Security Database Console: to add roles, profiles and authorization rules to support the Security Application Block.
[edit] History
There have been several versions of the Microsoft Enterprise Library:
- Enterprise Library 1.0 (January 2005) - Deprecated
- Enterprise Library 1.1 (June 2005) - Active
- Enterprise Library 2.0 (January 2006) - Active
- Enterprise Library 3.0 (April 2007) - Deprecated
- Enterprise Library 3.1 (May 2007) - Active
- Enterprise Library 4.0 (May 2008) - Current
[edit] Version 1.0
The first release of Enterprise Library was created by Avanade, Inc.. It merged many of the capabilities of older, standalone Application Blocks with Avanade's ACA.NET development framework. A portion of the Avanade Connected Architecture for .NET (ACA.NET) was licensed to Microsoft, and a joint Avanade-Microsoft development team combined this code with earlier Microsoft Application Blocks to create the first release of Microsoft Enterprise Library.
[edit] Version 1.1
Two releases of Enterprise Library were released for .NET Framework 1.1. The first was released in January 2005, followed by a minor maintenance release in June 2005. The .NET 1.1 releases of Enterprise Library contained the following Application Blocks:
- Caching
- Configuration
- Cryptography
- Data Access
- Exception Handling
- Logging and Instrumentation
- Security
[edit] Version 2.0
In January 2006, a new version of Enterprise Library was released that targeted .NET Framework 2.0. The most significant change in this release was that the Configuration Application Block was removed, and the blocks were updated to use .NET's improved System.Configuration capabilities. This release also included significant improvements to the Logging Application Block, and much of the Security Application Block was removed due to similar capabilities provided in .NET Framework 2.0. The .NET 2.0 release of Enterprise Library contained the following Application Blocks:
- Caching
- Data Access
- Cryptography
- Exception Handling
- Logging
- Security
[edit] Version 3.0
In April 2007, Enterprise Library 3.0 was released. It contains new Application Blocks, a new Application Block Software factory designed to simplify the development of new Application Blocks and extensions, and new features providing better integration with .NET Framework 3.0. The 3.0 release of Enterprise Library contains the following Application Blocks:
- Caching
- Data Access
- Cryptography
- Exception Handling
- Logging
- Policy Injection
- Security
- Validation
[edit] Version 3.1
In May 2007, Enterprise Library 3.1 was released with minor enhancements to the Validation and Policy Injection Application Blocks.
[edit] Version 4.0
This release of Enterprise Library includes the following:
- Integration with the Unity Application Block
- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) 2.0 support and improved instrumentation
- Performance improvements (particularly, in the Logging Application Block)
- Pluggable Cache Managers
- Visual Studio 2008 support
- Bug fixes
Note: Existing public APIs (v3.1) are still supported.
The Application Block Software Factory and the Strong Naming Guidance Package are not included in this release but are available as a separate download. Thus, there is no longer a dependency on Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX).
For the detailed list of all changes, see About This Release of Enterprise Library.
[edit] Future
Ron Jacobs, a Microsoft Evangelist, described the purpose of Enterprise Library as "filling in the gaps" of .NET development between releases of the framework. As the framework continues to advance, developers are demanding more productive development libraries.
Microsoft continues to promote Enterprise Library for "Enterprise Development", and even many projects within Microsoft IT use it.
[edit] See also
- Unity Dependency Injection Container
- Composite UI Application Block
- Software Factories
[edit] References and external links
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