Unless you have been living under a rock you would have heard by now that Microsoft’s long awaited replacement of the ever popular Application Blocks – Enterprise Library has shipped. You can go straight to the download from here.
Enterprise Library, more affectionately known as EntLib is more than just an update to the application blocks, its an evolution. With this release the Patterns and Practices team sought to integrate the blocks in the obvious ways, in particular configuration is drastically simplified due to some new tooling (note the Design namespaces) so you don’t have to remember the sometimes complex configuration schema required to support the level of extensibility.
Just surfing the code for the first time now, it looks like they have actually integrated with the VS.NET designer which means that if you a component designer it might be possible to integrate your own components with the blocks at design time to squeeze even more productivity out of your environment.
Good work guys! I’m looking forward to working with the new bits.
P.S. Naturally, Readify is looking at its INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH .NET course to incorporate these new tools and advise on how best to leverage them.