Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : extensibility

Enterprise Library 5.0: Architectural refactoring complete

gmelnik — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:19:45 GMT

The highest priority story in the EntLib5 backlog is ARC01: Architectural refactoring, which includes the use of a dependency injection container for wiring your EntLib objects instead of the one-off ObjectBuilder factories and DI container independence (to allow other containers such Spring.NET, Castle/Windsor, StructureMap, Ninject etc. to be used instead of Unity if you prefer so). This work is now complete. For details of this architectural update, please see an easy-to-read summary by Bob Brumfield. We also touch on this in the channel9 video.

As usual, the updated bits are available for preview on Codeplex - http://entlib.codeplex.com/SourceControl/ListDownloadableCommits.aspx

Just Released: Unity Application Block 1.2 for Silverlight

gmelnik — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:01:41 GMT

If you are building rich application experiences in Silverlight, you can now use the power of dependency injection. It was possible to use Unity on Silverlight before, but you had to make some tweaks since Silverlight has some differences from the desktop common language runtime (CLR). We are happy to announce the official release of Unity for Silverlight.

The following capabilities and packaging of the Unity container have been adjusted in this release:

The single Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll file in the Silverlight version contains all the classes from the three separate desktop DLLs: Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll, Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder2.dll, and Microsoft.Practices.Unity.StaticFactoryExtension.dll. You only need to reference and deploy the one assembly in your Silverlight projects.
Because of differences in the Silverlight security model, only public types can be created and injected by the container. The desktop version allows you to also inject internal types.
XML configuration is not supported.
The Unity interception mechanism is not supported.

An updated quickstart is also included.

See Chris’s post for more details on how this release was produced.

As always, submit your feedback and/or questions via Unity community forum.

Merry Christmas! and … Joyous Coding!

What is Enterprise Library team currently up to?

gmelnik — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:10:00 GMT

After shipping Enterprise Library v4.1, the team is focusing on the ease-of-use and learnability aspects of both EntLib and Unity. Our top stories of the current backlog include the following:

Unity for Silverlight [Done - 12/14/2008]
Comprehensive Enterprise Library FAQs [Done - 2/10/2009]
Validation Block Hands-on Lab [Done - 1/3/2009]
Interception Hands-on Lab [Done - 3/18/2009]
Unity Extensibility documentation [In Dev]
New video on Unity (level 200)
New video on Unity Extensibility (level 400)
Customer satisfaction survey analysis [Done]

These are all things we plan on doing prior to starting Enterprise Library v5 research and planning work early next year.

Just Released: Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1 and Unity 1.2

gmelnik — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:17:00 GMT

From the floor of the Los Angeles Convention Center, I am writing this message in between many exciting PDC sessions and conversations with customers of Enterprise Library and other p&p assets.

Microsoft patterns & practices is pleased to announce the twin release of Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1 and Unity 1.2.

What’s New in Enterprise Library v4.1?

This release of Enterprise Library is a service release that includes the following:

– Unity interception mechanism and integration of the Policy Injection Application Block with the Unity Application Block;

– Performance improvements;

– Usability improvements to the configuration tool;

– Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 support;

– Bug fixes.

For the detailed list of all changes, see About This Release of Enterprise Library.

What’s New in Unity v1.2?

− Added an interception mechanism (extension);

− Added two instance interceptors (TransparentProxyInterceptor, InterfaceInterceptor) and one type interceptor (VirtualMethodInterceptor);

− Improved support for generics;

− Added support for arrays;

− Registered names are now available as an ObjectBuilder policy so that you can do a ResolveAll from within the strategy chain. The container automatically registers itself with itself;

− Added PerThreadLifeTimeManager;

− Bug fixes;

− Performance improvements.

How to Get Started?

If you are new to 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;

− review the source and unit tests for deeper understanding;

− view webcasts on Enterprise Library and Unity, review demo code.

If you already know and love the Enterprise Library:

− check out the change log for this release;

− upgrade to V4.1—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;

− review the documentation on how to use interception with Unity;

− view webcasts on Enterprise Library and Unity, review demo code.

Happy Coding!

Unity DI container 1.0 shipped!

gmelnik — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:09:00 GMT

Microsoft patterns & practices is excited to announce the release of Unity 1.0.

As many of you already know, Unity is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection (DI) container. It facilitates building loosely coupled applications and provides .NET developers with the following advantages:

Simplified object creation, especially for hierarchical object structures and dependencies;
Abstraction of requirements; this allows developers to specify dependencies at run time or in configuration and simplify management of crosscutting concerns;
Increased flexibility by deferring component configuration to the container;
Service location capability; this allows clients to store or cache the container.

You can download Unity (binaries, source code, unit tests, documentation, and quickstarts) from:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/unity

The Unity team thanks our Industry Advisory Board and all members of the community who provided meaningful feedback in the past 3 months. We encourage you to continue doing so and engage on http://codeplex.com/unity

Unity container: resolving non-public objects

gmelnik — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:10:00 GMT

If you care, please read the following thread posted on Codeplex: http://www.codeplex.com/unity/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=25123 and comment on the path we are taking to address the issue with injecting and resolving non-public types in partial trust scenarios.

Thanks!

GAX/GAT February 2008 Final Release

gmelnik — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:42:00 GMT

The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) expands the capabilities of Visual Studio by allowing architects and developers to run guidance packages, such as those included in Software Factories, which automate key development tasks from within the Visual Studio environment.

The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) is a guidance package which allows architects to author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including Software Factories, frameworks, and patterns. The resulting Guidance Packages, composed of templates, wizards and recipes, help developers build solutions in a way consistent with the architecture guidance. In order to use the Guidance Automation Toolkit, you must first install the Guidance Automation Extensions.

New In This Release

The February 2008 Release of the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit has the following improvements to the earlier release, the July 2007 Community Technology Preview:

− Support for Visual Studio 2005 and/or Visual Studio 2008. This version of GAX will run on either version of Visual Studio. If you don’t have GAX installed, you can install GAX to support Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008 or both. The installer will automatically determine which versions of Visual Studio you have installed.

− Updating GAX.

§ If you have a previous version of GAX installed on Visual Studio 2005, it will be updated to the February 2008 release of GAX. You are no longer required to uninstall GAX and the corresponding guidance packages.

§ Guidance packages that are registered with the previous version of GAX will automatically be registered with the current version of GAX (GAT, however, will require an update – see the information below).

− Visual Studio side-by-side support. If you have Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 running side-by-side, you can have GAX running against both versions. Guidance packages developed and registered through GAT for a specific version of Visual Studio (2005 or 2008) will only be available in that version. Guidance packages designed for Visual Studio 2005 and installed through an MSI will only be available in Visual Studio 2005. Installation of any guidance package through an MSI that does not explicitly prompt for the version of Visual Studio to install to, will install to Visual Studio 2005 by default.

− Improved Uninstaller. During GAX uninstallation, you can click the Check Installed Packages button for the list of all registered guidance packages. If you proceed with GAX removal, the uninstaller will only attempt to automatically uninstall those guidance packages that were registered manually using GAT. If you have guidance packages that were installed through an MSI(s), you should not proceed with removing GAX. Instead, you should use the Add or Remove Programs tool to uninstall these guidance packages.

In addition, this release of GAX has the following fixes:

− A blank error message was displayed if you attempted to uninstall GAX before uninstalling GAT or other registered packages when running Windows Vista.

− A FileLoadException error was displayed if you used the Guidance Package Manager on Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

− GAX and GAT would not properly validate and recognize custom Visual Studio project types when unfolding templates for custom project types registered only in the experimental hive.

Downloads

GAX and GAT must be downloaded and installed separately. GAT requires that GAX is installed first.

If you have a previous version of GAX installed on Visual Studio 2005, it will be updated to the February 2008 release of GAX. You are no longer required to uninstall GAX and the corresponding guidance packages (with an exception of GAT, which must be re-installed).

Enjoy!

Unity February 2008 Community Technology Preview

gmelnik — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:12:00 GMT

Friends! Today we have released the February 2008 Community Technology Preview of Unity, our lightweight extensible dependency injection container (it's truly lightweight - to use it, you only need to include 2 assemblies totalling about 100K). Get it from Codeplex: http://www.codeplex.com/unity. It comes with all source, test cases, a couple of examples/quickstarts and an initial set of docs. We look forward to your feedback. Don’t wait for too long. Our final release is on March 15.

Also, as a reminder, registration for the Unity Extensibility Workshop closes on February 15. Your participation is invited. If you want to jam with the Unity authors and other developers who are interested in building extensions for Unity, this is a great opportunity.

Unity Extensibility Workshop

gmelnik — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:13:00 GMT

Microsoft Main Campus (Building 99)
February 18-19, 2008
Redmond, WA

Description

Unity is Microsoft’s lightweight, extensible dependency injection container.

Microsoft patterns & practices will host Unity Extensibility Workshop to walk the participants through the design of Unity container and its extensibility model. You will become familiar with all aspects of the container infrastructure and container extensions: from using existing extensions to building your own. A special attention will be given to the integration of Unity with Enterprise Library 4.0 and the refactored application blocks. Because the workshop will be hosted by the Enterprise Library team, you will also have the opportunity to ask questions and potentially influence the future of the Enterprise Library.

Purpose

− Transfer knowledge from Microsoft patterns & practices experts and authors of Unity/EntLib4.0 to attendees about building container extensions and integrating them with Unity;

− Transfer knowledge from the attendees to Microsoft experts about the common extensions that are useful in their application contexts;

− Advance hands-on exercises for others in the software engineering community to learn from.

Prerequisites

− This is an advanced, participatory workshop. It is highly recommended you have a working knowledge of programming in the DI style. There will be some introductory content around the technologies, but there will be a heavy focus on writing C# code.

− You must have prior experience using one of the existing DI containers, such as Spring.NET, Castle/Windsor, Structure Map etc.

− It is recommended you read “Deconstructing ObjectBuilder” posts by Chris Tavares.

− You must bring a laptop and a VPC will be provided. If you can have Microsoft Virtual PC installed ahead of time, it will save you from having to install it after you arrive. This will prevent you from having any other system requirements on the machine.

− If you plan on attending, please think of at least one extension idea you would like to introduce to Unity. One of the main reasons we’re hosting this workshop is to discover and share particularly valuable and important extensions (so we can make the underlying extensibility mechanism as easy as possible). We will ask you to define your scenarios at some point while you are here.

Cost

− There is no registration fee for the workshop.

− Attendees are responsible for making and paying for their own travel to and from Bldg 99 in Redmond, WA.

− Attendees are responsible for their lodging accommodations during the workshop. Suggestions can be provided after registering.

− Breakfast and lunch will be provided on all 2 days and a dinner event will be provided on Tuesday night (Feb 19).

Registering

We apologize for the short notice, but please send your info in by Feb 15. Attendance is limited to 25 people and registrations are based on the first come-first serve basis, so please RSVP by sending a note to Grigori Melnik as soon as possible. In the email, please provide the following information about each attendee:

− Full name

− Company name

− Software engineering background

− Types of DI containers used

− Email address (required for internet access)

− If a vegetarian lunch is required

Feel free to contact me for any other questions.

DIAB is now Unity

gmelnik — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:19:00 GMT

First of all, we finally came up with a name for the DI container we are building. A drum roll, please… We’ve decided to call it “Unity” as a container that epitomizes a quality of one (system) being, comprising, or consisting of a number (of parts/components). It may not be as descriptive as other blocks but it fits with our vision. We also wanted to distinguish it from other application blocks.

A short description of Unity is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container.

Unity will provide mechanisms for building instances of objects, which may contain other dependent object instances.

Unity will expose Register methods that support configuring the container with mappings and objects (including singleton instances), and Get methods to return instances of built objects that contain any dependent objects. Note we have purposefully designed the API to support the “fluent interface” pattern. Here’s a preview of the fundamental features of the Unity API, these are very tentative as we are still working on the semantics:

public class UnityContainer : IDisposable {

// getting objects

public T Get<T>(string key){}

public IEnumerable<T> GetAll<T>(){}

// type mapping

public UnityContainer Register<TFrom, TTo>(string key) where TTo : TFrom {}

// singleton support

public UnityContainer SetSingleton<T>(string key) {}

// support for registering existing objects

public UnityContainer RegisterInstance<T>(T existing, string key, bool overload) {}

// running existing objects through the container

public T BuildUp<T>(T existing, string key){}

}

There are also overloads for non-generics.

So, a typical usage scenario will be:

UnityContainer container = new UnityContainer()

.Register<ILogger, TraceLogger>()

.Register<ISomething, Something>()
.Register<ISomethingElse, SomethingElse>();

container.Get<ISomething>();

As mentioned in our previous postings, Unity will be released in two forms - standalone container and as a part of Enterprise Library 4, with the existing blocks refactored to take advantage of Unity.

Unity will support extensibility via the ContainerExtension mechanism to allow third parties to add support for other on-demand features at runtime, such as event broker.

Enterprise Library product backlog

gmelnik — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:00:00 GMT

I've posted the current EntLib4 product backlog with prioritized stories on Codeplex: http://www.codeplex.com/entlib/Wiki/View.aspx?title=EntLib4%20Backlog

There are two main areas we are working on: introducing the dependency injection block (which I blogged about in my previous post ) and making enhancements to the existing blocks. As always, community feedback is welcomed.

-- Grigori

Making Dependency Injection Simpler in EntLib 4

gmelnik — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 05:51:00 GMT

The benefits of modular design with cohesive components that have little or no coupling to the rest of the software system are commonly recognized today. Dependency injection is a mechanism that facilitates such aggressive decoupling and independence of components. Lightweight dependency injection containers (such as StructureMap, Spring.NET, or Castle Windsor) help assemble components (potentially from different projects) into a cohesive application at runtime and promote code reuse. An introduction to dependency injection can be found in this article by Martin Fowler.

The values of modular design implemented with support of dependency injection have been long recognized and embraced by Microsoft patterns & practices. Originally, implemented for the Composite UI Application Block (CAB) and later for the Enterprise Library v2 (back in early 2006), the ObjectBuilder pipeline allows to customize how objects are created at runtime. The current Enterprise Library configuration system is based on a DI container created using ObjectBuilder (Brian Button has written an excellent post on how Enterprise Library used ObjectBuilder).

With the upcoming version of EntLib (v4), we are planning to provide containers (flat and hierarchical) that will support dependency injection out of the box. These containers will be packaged individually and also with EntLib v4. Furthermore, to demonstrate the effective use of dependency injection on a real world project, we plan to refactor individual EntLib blocks and abstract away configuration code (configurators). We will build an EntLib façade that will have individual configurators injected in it as needed. A client app can go through this façade to request services while all wiring of objects necessary for those services to run will be handled by the DI container. This will not only make the design cleaner but will also make it easier to use and configure only those application blocks that you desire.

Once refactored, the EntLib blocks can be used as a la carte with other DI containers – some updating of the façade would be necessary and we invite the EntLib enthusiasts to port the EntLib façade to individual containers. Swapping DI containers means organizations can leverage their existing infrastructure.

For those who wish to continue to use the EntLib the way they always had, the current public API of EntLib will NOT be broken.

We believe that these changes will not only add well-desired functionality to the list of p&p assets, but further promote the principles of good architectural design.

Of course, we’d like to hear from you: comments, ideas, screams….

Planning the next release of Enterprise Library

gmelnik — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:47:00 GMT

We, at patterns & practices, are planning a release of Enterprise Library for Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas). It will happen at around the same time Visual Studio 2008 is out (Feb 2008 as per our roadmap). At a minimum, you can expect the current functionality ported to Orcas.

In order to identify potential opportunities for the next release, I would like to understand better the ways people in the trenches are extending EntLib today. I’d also like some feedback on app development scenarios that are hard today and that you want us to enable. Please submit your comments through this 10-question survey. Thanks for your input!