The patterns & practices team has shipped Enterprise Library 4.0, a collection of reusable software components, known as application blocks, designed to assist software developers with common enterprise development challenges, such as logging, validation, data access, exception handling.

The new released includes integration with the Unity Application Block, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) 2.0 support, performance improvements, Visual Studio 2008 support, and pluggable cache managers.

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.

There have been more than 1,290,000 downloads of Enterprise Library across six releases.

To learn more about Enterprise Library, see the Enterprise Library MSDN site. The official release is available on Codeplex.

Application Blocks in Enterprise Library

Enterprise Library 4.0 – May 2008 contains the following application blocks:

• Caching Application Block. Developers can use this application block to incorporate a cache in their applications. Pluggable cache providers are supported.
• Cryptography Application Block. Developers can use this application block to incorporate hashing and symmetric encryption in their applications.
• Data Access Application Block. Developers can use this application block to incorporate standard database functionality in their applications.
• Exception Handling Application Block. Developers and policy makers can use this application block to create a consistent strategy for processing exceptions that occur throughout the architectural layers of enterprise applications.
• Logging Application Block. Developers can use this application block to include standard logging functionality in their applications.
• Policy Injection Application Block. Developers can use this application block to implement interception policies that can be used to streamline the implementation of common features, such as logging, caching, exception handling, and validation, across a system.
• Security Application Block. Developers can use this application block to incorporate authorization and security caching functionality in their applications.
• Unity Application Block. Developers can use this application block as a lightweight and extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection.
• Validation Application Block. Developers can use this application block to create validation rules for business objects that can be used across different layers of their applications.

Getting started with Enterprise Library

If you are new to Enterprise Library:

• Read Introduction to the Enterprise Library.
• Download, compile and run QuickStart samples—study the code.
• Read through related QuickStart Walkthroughs and “Key Scenarios” sections of the documentation.
• Practice 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 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 (the exact date will be announced on the Enterprise Library landing page).