Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : Validation Block

Just Released: Validation Application Block Hands-On Lab

gmelnik — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:35:03 GMT

Here’s a gift for the New Year’s. We have produced a new hands-on lab on validation with Enterprise Library. It contains 13 exercises that walk you through capabilities of the Validation Application Block in various application contexts:

The first 11 deal with a Windows Forms data processing application that takes the information entered by the user to populate and process business entities. The Validation Application Block is used to validate the created business objects before processing them in gradually more sophisticated ways.
Starting with Lab 7, the Windows Forms validation–integration feature is used to directly validate the input for the form's controls.
Labs 8 through 11 deal with the extensibility of the application block.
Lab 12 shows how to use the ASP.NET validation-integration feature of the application block to validate the ASP.NET control's values, using a Web forms version of the simple data entry application from the previous labs.
Finally, for Lab 13, the ASP.NET application works as a front-end for a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service while the WCF validation–integration feature of the application block is used to declaratively validate the service parameters on the server side.

The lab instructions are available as a CHM for easy navigation and as a PDF for printing.

There are two ways you can complete this lab set: you can manually complete it from start-to-finish or you can use the starter solutions to complete only the labs you want to. By using the provided starter solutions, you can complete any of the labs in the order you prefer.

Download Validation HOL

Next up is our new Interception hands-on lab. You may expect to see it released in January.

Enterprise Library 4.0 for Visual Studio 2008 released!

gmelnik — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:16:00 GMT

Friends, I am extremely excited to announce the release of the Enterprise Library 4.0 for Visual Studio 2008. Congratulations to the team!

Quick Links:

– MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/entlib

– Community Forum: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=119312

– Community Extensions: http://codeplex.com/entlibcontrib

What is Enterprise Library?

Enterprise Library is a collection of reusable software components (application blocks) designed to assist software developers with common enterprise development challenges (such as logging, validation, caching, exception handling, and many others). Application blocks are a type of guidance encapsulating Microsoft recommended development practices; they are provided as source code plus documentation that can be used "as is," extended, or modified by developers to use on complex, enterprise-level line-of-business development projects.

Goals for Enterprise Library

Enterprise Library is a collection of application blocks intended for use by developers who build complex, enterprise-level applications. Enterprise Library is used when building applications that are typically to be deployed widely and to interoperate with other applications and systems. In addition, they generally have strict security, reliability, and performance requirements. The goals of Enterprise Library are the following:

Consistency. All Enterprise Library application blocks feature consistent design patterns and implementation approaches.

Extensibility. All application blocks include defined extensibility points that allow developers to customize the behavior of the application blocks by adding their own code.

Ease of use. Enterprise Library offers numerous usability improvements, including a graphical configuration tool, a simpler installation procedure, and clearer and more complete documentation and samples.

Integration. Enterprise Library application blocks are designed to work well together or individually.

What’s New in v4.0?

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.

Enterprise Library by Numbers:

2003	Year when the first application block was released
2005	Year when v1 of Enterprise library was released.
1,290,000	Total number of downloads of Enterprise Library since the first release.
»470,000	Total number of visits to the community site (since Dec 2006 when the Codeplex site was launched)
»1,600	Number of discussion threads on the community site
54%	NPS (Net Promoter Score)
6	Number of Enterprise Library releases (v1.0, v1.1, v2.0, v3.0, v3.1, v4.0)
9	Number of Application blocks in Enterprise Library 4.0
19	Number of weekly iterations to build Enterprise Library 4.0
401	Number of interim builds of Enterprise Library 4.0
»900	Number of pages of documentation in V4.0
»8,000	Number of automated tests cases in V4.0
»100,000	Number of executable lines of code in V4.0

Getting Started

If you are new to the Enterprise Library:

− read the Introduction to the Enterprise Library;

− download, compile and run the QuickStart samples—study the code;

− read through the related QuickStart Walkthroughs and “Key Scenarios” sections of the documentation;

− practice the Hands-On Labs;

− join the webcast in June 2008 (the exact date will be announced on the Enterprise Library landing page).

If you already know and love the Enterprise Library:

− check out the change log for this release;

− upgrade to V4.0—no code change is required—simply update the references to the corresponding application block assemblies and to the common assemblies;

− download the updated QuickStarts and run through the Unity-integrated examples to get the flavor of new dependency injection style of using the Enterprise Library;

− join the webcast in June 2008 (I’ll announce the exact date later).

Happy Coding!

Information on Microsoft patterns & practices

– Visit us at http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/ to see the full line of existing patterns & practices.

Using Validation Application Block from Web apps in an AJAX way

gmelnik — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:37:00 GMT

The Validation Application Block (VAB) added to the Enterprise Library v.3 a comprehensive set of common validators and integration adapters for Windows Forms, ASP.NET, and WCF. Additionally, Martin Bennedik built an adapter for WPF. More than half of those who responded to my EntLib Extensibility survey, indicated that they used VAB. That's a great adoption!

If you are using VAB with ASP.NET, the server-side validation requires a full post-back and results in some performance depreciation. Now you can improve responsiveness of your Web apps that require such validation. Patterns & practices Web Client Software Factory team just released the Validation Guidance Bundle. It leverages VAB and ASP.NET AJAX to perform server-side validation without doing full post-backs. It’s pretty easy to use. The bundle also includes recommendations on which validation types to use for various scenarios and a good demo that leverages a mix of validators both on the client and on the server.

All in all, if you are building Web UIs for your business entities that are already validated with VAB, you’ll find this bundle quite useful!