Tom Hollander's blog

I would like to see:
1) 80$ for good designer probably made using Visual Studio DSL technology. This designer should allow me to develop in both UI block for PC and mobile: UseCases, Flow control, etc
2) 20$ for support new WPF and WPF/E

And many more, but I will write it ASAP :)

1. A really serious focus on key scenarios & examples for ASP.NET. No more HOL's that claim to demonstrate ASP.NET through Winforms.
2. A security rules engine that utilizes CODEDOM
3. A provider that stores configuration info in SQL
4. A Web version of the Configuration Console
5. A Single demonstration project that employs all the key scenarios listed for each block
6. Completely self contained unit tests or at least better documentation on the setup and dependencies to run the tests.
7. An XML manipulation block. The base .NET library has great support but there are many simple operations which require too much code.

I would like to see:

1) 80$ for Improve Software Factories, this will be a great programming help, automatization is a great need, specially in SOA Application with WCF, and link closer with App Block.

2) 20$ for Improve Documentation.

Thanks

How about support for ODP.NET in the Data Access Block?

I aggree with Kevin White for:

7) An XML manipulation block. The base .NET library has great support but there are many simple operations which require too much code

I agree with some sort of update around UIP although it should still be separate from Ent Lib.

I would spend $100 USD on a new version of the User Interface Process (UIP) block -- it's definitely long overdue.  Amongst the new features should be support for web user controls (as views.)

Definitely I would like to see more snippets, and GA Recipes. The EntLib is mature enough to have its own DSL integrated with VS and  EntLib Configuration console. I would also like to see more ASPECT/ObjectBuilder features similar to the CAB. I’m not sure if the LINQ will be available with .NET 3.0, but if it will I would like to see EntLib makes use of it.
What else? Cache provider for ASP.NET cache.

Lets think outside the box: I would like to see an attempt to create .NET on Rails using either VB or C#.

- Default behaviour for configuration-less logging/tracing.  I've had to replace Logger and Tracer with a "default" version which disables logging and tracing when no configuration is present.

- Best practicse guidance on how ASP.NET Health Monitoring integrates in a multi-tier application.

- A move away from GotDotNet as far as the message board is concerned.  http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn has a much better setup for discussions.  The Codeplex discussion board features aren't that great either.

I agree with Mario.  $100 for improve Software Factories.  It still takes entirely too long to develop an app, primarily because it takes forever to write a good business layer.  Strongly Typed Datasets are still no place for business logic.

$20 for a comprehensive "user settings" application block that can work with both ASP.Net and WinForms and anything in WinFX. It must support a hierarchy, even if that simply means parsing "/" or "\" like the old VB 5/6 could do for user settings, but handle more complex settings via serialization - or the way it [is/can be] done with ASP.NET server controls. System and application settings should be separate from per-user and per-form (or, per-from-per control) settings. It should have a modest learning capability (if something is different x, e.g. 3, times in a row, make it the new default). System settings should be useful to store settings for Windows Service configuration tools.

Application settings should be useable under ASP.Net and winforms (e.g. centrally managed) and do things from "where are the templates / default files" to "what color scheme to you want". It should handle both local XML files (winforms) and database. If a winform application is using SOA or web services, how about something that will work easliy with one? And forget any stupid ways of storing configuration based on the version of an application for winforms/FX - that is an insult to users who only use the current version. Enough already of that nonsense.

$5 for an RSS application block, client and server side. Something that just drops into any application and will work - something that does all the heavy lifting and is close to "roll your own" with 100 lines of code. Or less. Something better, far better, than a few all-too-general framework classes. Like the original SQLHelper, give me the 90% and I'll probably stop worrying about the other 10% because I'll spend all the saved time doing UI.

$5 Notification block, that is more than just error logging. Something that can send usage and performance data, for admin purposes (like systems work like planning for scalability). Something that pushes the notifications out to the right place, and can scan data from muliple sources (I'll provide the queries), looks at a threshold or regex, and sends notifications accordingly. These can be based on a class interface / delegate (I'll provide the object & collection it works with), or an email list or whatever. HINT: It should be more workflow than error log. Unlike the workflow engine, it should be focused on triggering conditions and notifications, at a specific level, and easier to use than a general workflow engine. Multiple sources, multiple targets (ways of notifying). Maybe this could be a distant relative, in nature, to the windows notifications (the service) that was later found to be a security risk and is turned off.

$5 for an application block, perhaps something that is a half-extension of ASP.NET and Atlas, that makes modal popup windows easier to use, when retrieving values. I have too many custom classes and scripts that are almost, but not quite, duplicates of one another. In short, a complex form needs a selection that is more complex than a single control - in winforms it means a modal popup form, often with a filter because the timesheet charge code is a hierarchy (the possibilities are in the thousands, but only dozens when you drill down). Make a few settings, like the current selection, launch select and retrieve. This needs to be generalized in an application block. It only happens a modest number of times in an application, but it far too much of a pain to do, and never quite qorthwhile enough to be an entire library "roll your own" style.

$5 How about an application block to more generalize external storage of the USB/1394 variety? This is probably less work-related and more like "I'm tired of writing code for home use, and what is already there doesn't cut it". This should cover those key fobs, cameras, mp3 players, and so on. Something that can make sense out of them in ways beyond what XP and Windows Explorer does. The software that comes with these things knows nothing about anything else, and what's worse, there is nothing that works with .NET at the "programable" level. So we need an application block for this - something that goes beyond files, and does the basics rather than the be-all-end-all of WinFS that won't be a simple-to-use library either.

$5 An application block for simple image processing - something far below those expensive libraries and an order of magnitude - no 2 - easier to use for developers. The 80-20, no, 90-10, no 95-5 rule. What do people need? How about simple cropping, sharpening, softening, color correction (e.g. fix florescent lights), wrong-f-stop fixing and similar non-esoteric effects. It should be limited to, when used in applications, a few controls and things even my mother can understand. If it's fancy, forget it - that's what the 3rd party stuff is for. I want something easy that can fit into a modest application block. If it can work with still captures from a business video conference, or a scanned document, we're really talking close to what's needed. It should take in common files, almost all of which will be JPG, and spit out something similar. Forget the weird stuff.

I'll think some more on how to spend the rest of the $100. I need to take a more in-depth look at what's in the newer parts of .NET and still missing, now that you're asking.

Easy to use, less configuration, datagrid tied up pareto charts and graph. Put all the data on the datagrid tie it up to another graph control and to have it graph in configurable pareto charts (pie, bar, etc...) without the needs of using/configuring 3rd party reporting tool.

Easy embedding Macromedia Flash or any movie file format on both web and client application.

Less configurable control that converts the current screen into adobe, work, powerpoint... and datagrid conversion to excel.

What is the best way to tell you what we'd like to see? Do people have to reply to the blog?

1. A Forms Authentication block. This includes authentication, ticket manipulation, integration with the Identity and Principal, etc..
2. Enterprise Architecture block. I'm thinking of the systems that have to link to workflow engines like Biztalk. They need endpoints, aggregators, sequence.
3. Business components block. Something that helps produce better business services, entities, workflows etc.. Could be demonstrated with a new Global Bank (or is it AIB)

Re XML Manipulation -- see XLinq (now LINQ over XML) at http://www.xlinq.net/

Re LINQ in .NET 3.0:  .NET 3.0 is the WPF/WCF/etc release.  LINQ is in Orcas, which is a later release.

Re .NET on Rails:  take a look at the BLinq project at http://www.asp.net/sandbox/app_blinq.aspx?tabid=62

I would like to have a code-generator for Data Access Application Block. for example : call a StoredProcedure easyly and quickly.

I use the library (specifically the ObjectBuilder and Configuration blocks) to create custom software factories. It has worked out great. However, last week I realized that there was no way to construct a factory that would return an instance of a class that requires type parameters (generic class, that is). The problem can be traced to the CreateObject method in ICustomFactory interface which does not have the type to instantiate as one of its parameters. If it did, then the type would include the generic type parameters needed and all would be well. Thanks,
Amit Goswami (amitDOTgoswamiATideaDotcom)

As stated in a few other posts...tools to generate the skeleton for an complete app - business entities, business components, data access components, and maybe even some skeletal UI.  Basically something that generates the architecture recommended on patterns and practices.  This would be especially useful for apps focused on editing business data, which seems to be a reasonable percentage of apps out there.  

This is not necessarily an EntLib 3.0 recommendation; EL is not a code generator.  But I wanted to take advantage of Tom's publicity <gr> (apologies, Tom).  Seriously, what is MS' answer to solving these problems?  Architecture guidance on P&P is well presented, but not prescriptive enough for specific implementation problems that many seem to face.

Perhaps a community project should be initiated, rather than look for such support in EL?

XML Application Block. That is the most wanted element with Next Release.

I think I would like to see an Object Pooling applciation something, that can contain a pool of instantiated objects and give them to an application on a as needed basis.  Also possibly simplification or better documentaiton / examples on Object Builder.

As it was already mentioned: redesigning log filters to make them non-global. Currently filters like severity filter are applied on per-app basis. This makes them more or less unusable - in a typical situation you want to suppress errors for certain categories or listeners, but not for all messages.

Yes you heard right.&amp;nbsp; There will be a new version fo Enterprise Library coming out. Version 3.0,...

1) CAB/SCSF for the Mobile platform:
ObjectBuilder's run-time lookups (reflection) may be too expensive for Mobile computing. Another run at it, perhaps, with 3.0?

2) More guidance as GAT recipies. You pick.

3) A best practice for deploying a Client/Server solution to a customer that supports two levels of ClickOnce®. One from me to customer's server, another from their server to their clients.

Thanks Tom.

The Enterprise library team are planning for a new version which will target .Net Framework 3.0. Tom...

Do Something For transaction handling.
In 2.0 we have to pass transaction to each record which we uses.
I didn't think so that it is a good practice to pass transaction to every method.

$20 - Easy way to upgrade existing applications
$60 - WinFX & WinCF, LINQ (if not, why it is El for .NET 3.0?)
$20 - Integration with VS (DSL, WorkFlow)

This should only cost 20AUD:

Please include support for Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). There's about five different frameworks in .NET that support it already. I understand that Orcas timeframe .NET will include an official API, however I would really like to see EntLib 3.0 include custom P/Invoke support for ETW. I feel that the high speed event tracing service in ETW is an essential part of having a truely supportable event logging architecture. I have previously built architectures around the <a url="http://www.diamondsierra.com/Products/PB.html">Paul Bunyan</a> by Diamond Sierra, which includes a high speed logging service.

There should be no reason to go with a third party product since ETW is available in Windows XP and Windows 2003 (and Windows 2000, for that matter). However, I have found no .NET wrapper for the ETW apis.

Hey all, did you know that Tom Hollander is looking for great ideas to enhance the quality and functionality...

Tom Hollander, who is on the Enterprise Library team, posted to his blog the Enterprise Library team&amp;nbsp;want...

$100 to improve the speed of logging.

Currently Logging Application Block spends enormous amounts of time (40-50 microseconds per log event on my machine) just to discard the messages that are ineffective because of the log level or categories.

Other libraries, namely log4net (http://logging.apache.org/log4net) and NLog (http://www.nlog-project.org) are many orders of magnitude (nanoseconds instead of microseconds) faster in this area, which means they are able to process much more verbose-level messages at very little CPU cost.

The key to achieving high speed is to defer as much processing as possible until the message is known to be logged.

$25 for imporved out of box experience, default setup and config.

$45 for improving the documentation

$15 for the samples and quickstarts

$10 for complete integration of the environment overrides, including VStudio with source controled config files and "it just works" selection of a config file to match the detected environment.

The last $5 is at your discretion, its for situations when you need just a little more budget to make something "Good" instead of just useable.

Maybe there's already help out there, but I would like to see help on converting SOAP error messages thrown when an exception is thrown in a class referenced by a web service, back into the original Exception.  There possibly could be a client and server side of this block.

Hi Tom,
I would like to see the "Environmental Override" integrated in the confirguration Management.  This will help everybody with the "deployement hell".  Especially when you are not the one performing the deployement!

i'll give you everything for a decent solution to using web services within visual studio.

something that would allow for dev/test/live environments and properly integrate with source safe.

WinFXが.Net Framework3.0となったことで、EnterpriseLibraryにも新しい動きが出てきたような感じですね。次期バージョンについてのリクエストを募集しているようです。http://blogs.msdn.com/tomholl/archive/2006/06/21/641840.aspx ...

What about an update to the Service Factory using all aspects of WCF? Allowing encrypted channels, authentication, WebService endpoint or WCF-style endpoint, TCP channel's, etc. Allowing the user in the creation wizard to check features and possibly be able to specify options right on the wizard to gen the service, or at the very least comments/TODOs in the sections to place code with examples or URL references of where to see examples.

I'm curious how do you see Microsoft Glidepath interacting with Enterprise library?

As far as a new block, I would recommend improvements to the XML Block. There are still a lot of Flat/Delimited files that are being ftp'd, etc. Yeah, you can do this with DTS, but we want something lightweight and free!

$50 - Windows Workflow
$30 - Visual Studio integration
$20 - Documentation and Samples

$10 Configuration reporting block supporting simple queries and outputs. For example, allowing IT pros to quickly ascertain an application's configuration remotely.

$20 Enhancing either the ObjectBuilder API or documentation to simplify container management.

$60 Adding providers for the other major RDBMS products. Waiting for a DB vender means waiting to deploy the next version of EL.)

$10 Configure Windows Workflow hosts. (This feature might someday become as helpful as the Data block!)

Hi there.

I would like the processing of customizing the configuration tool to be much easier.  For example, adding custom blocks through the configuration GUI is far from straight forward now, and few people (like Olaf) can pull it off smoothly.  I would also like to have the popular extensions (like those by Olaf) to be integrated into the next version.  $30.

I think there is vast room from creating a deployment application block.  Because much of the deployment process involves MSBUILD behind the scenes, it would be nice to have a block to simplify this process.  Also, it would be nice to be able to deploy and application to a webfarm through Enterprise Library somehow; this is a common task for us, and I suspect many others too.  40%

Finally, I think many would benefit from some sort of DB broker service, that offloads the burden of frequent DB writes from the application to a broker (think of it like a write buffer).  For applications that frequently write data to a DB in a high traffic environment, the writes can be a bottle neck for the application.  Writing to an external service (for example) would free up the application resources.  I imagine this to be a sort of data access provider.  $30


Thanks,
Chris

I have allways wondered if encryption could be made easier.  Maybe I am not using it in the right way but I am looking for the chance of not having to deploy the .key file on each workstation (of course is a windows application) so I would spend my 100$ improving the cryptography application block for windows applications

I would like to see a configuration block as independed service.

Again a support for application configuration (at least a mechanism that works in the same manner as the EntLib does its own configuration).

$10 - move to CodePlex
$30 - New AOP block: context/container, common aspect/attribute library
$30 - New Business Rule Engine block
$20 - DSL
$10 - Software Factory

I have a project implemented Enterprise Library 2.0 lately. I failed to integrated it with Team System Application Designer. My question is that if your 3.0 will compactible with Application Designer in Team System?

Kang

mcsdkt@verizon.net

Include a Data Access Provider for MySQL!  I already built one for EL 2.0.

$60 - Improved documentation and samples
$30 - Out of the box experience
$10 - HOL example of using DatabaseTrace listener.

A single webpage (one well known url entry) acting as a central repository for custom blocks will also be appreciated

I'd like to see

1) $30 Ability to batch a series of requests for the Data Access block and then handle them sequentially when the results come back.  Right now I can call a single stored proc that calls multiple stored procs and process the multiple results, but I have to write a special stored proc for every scenario.

In a web app when doing the page load, and getting the data, typically your making a bunch of calls to get data drop drop down lists plus the details for the page, but since these drop down lists occur on many pages it would be better if there were a generic way to make multiple calls through managed code.

2) $50 sample web and win form apps that provides examples of the Best Practices for using the enterprise library...

3) $20 Provide extensions to the data Access block to export the data from a result set to common file formats (comma delimited, csv, xml, etc.).

There should be a provider for an connecting to an in memory dataset and apply SQL queries to it such as complex joins, aggregates, unions against multiple tables in the dataset.

I see various comments amounting to a full-blown IOC container (Spring style) based on ObjectBuilder. I also would like this feature - perhaps a Object Container Application Block that the other application blocks leverage rather than each block having their own static factory (considered a legacy design pattern?).

Also I would like my dependencies on entlib to be via interfaces. My current pain point is my dependency on the Caching Application Block. Though that block is well unit tested, it makes my application impossible to unit test - I have to fully configure caching before I can run simple tests (result of the legacy static factory pattern). I would like my code to only be dependent on an ICacheManager interface and have the ObjectContainer provide me with one at runtime and my unit tests provide me with a mock version at unit test time.

I created a simple container based on Farcaster and I've seen other posters have created such a container as well. Perhaps an ObjectContainer could be released well ahead of entlib 3.0 to quickly prevent the proliferation of custom containers?

Also, an ILog interface rather than a static Logger would prevent needing complex logging set up during unit test time.

Summarizing - I think entlib could provide an IOC container and enable down stream users to unit test their code via interfaces.

Thank you.

See my comments at http://jlchereau.blogspot.com/2006/06/enterprise-library.html

- $30 Security - Improve Authorization in an ASP.NET environment
- $20 FAAB/OAAB - File IO Application Block
- $20 Workflow support (see a future article on my blog)
- $10 Desktop search
- $10 Logging - Better formatters to ease log analysis
- $10 ASP.NET support/samples

$100 for UIPAB for .Net 2.0 / 3.0.  I never understood why UIP was not in EntLib.

It would be great support for ODP.NET 100 U$ for that.

In the enterprise logging application block 2.0... can we write to same flat file from multiple appdomains usinf flatfile tracelistener. By defult I see this being logged to different flat files. If this feature exists in 2.0 I would like to know how should we achieve this. If not I would like to see this feature in the next version.  Thanks.

i would like to see .UpdatedRowSource = UpdateRowSource.Both for any DbCommand working in the data block i.e. when you do an insert and have the ID column property .AutoIncrement = true, this ID field should get updated automatically from the database in the dataset, after the completion of insert.

$20 for pre-built strong-named assemblies.

$30 for a PostgreSQL data acces block provider that supports Kerberos

$50 for a file based text log writer that supports multiple processes writing to the same rolling log file without blocking. IIS can do it, why can't we ? Would be nice if this was compatible with WCF log aggregator.

I think Enterprise Library 3.0 should contain no updates to the existing functionality, but should instead contain new functionality that loosely intersects the EntLib 2.0 fnctionality. Version 3.0 could then be released as a side-by-side product (a la .NET 3.0) and could helpe really confuse the customers.

Off the top of my head, I'd like to see a data validation block that could be used from WinForm based apps as well as web apps and web services.  I'm currently thinking of a core engine that does the validation with three different means of interacting with it.  Also, the validation rules should be exressed as Xml schema - why invent a new format?

One more thing that I would like to see is the increased use of typed parameters, instead of strings. Not sure how that would be implemented. Also not sure how to prioritise this, since I have spent the $100 AUD allocated.

Regards,
Flavelle

$60 Factories that don't require the local configuration file so that .Net modules created for integration with 3rd party applications aren't dependent on the 3rd Party application's configuration file for redirection.  Factories can be created currently to specify the location of the configuration file, but it is completely undocumented as far as I was able to find on how to do this.

$40 As 1 or more others have stated, built in capabilities to strongly name the assemblies.

$1000: Documentation. I have spent *far* too long trying to figure out how to use all this stuff.

$100: Add the whole jolly lot to the .Net framework and have done with it.

I'm back from a brief but fun vacation in Paris and London -&amp;nbsp;away from the distractions of the web...

$100 UIP brought up to .Net 2.0  (and combined with the Composit UI Application Block)

Tom,

Thanks for asking our suggestions....

$20 -  out of the box ODP.NET support
$20 -  Its not a good idea to pass transactions in each method(in Data Access block). So internalize transaction by creating a trasaction scope(which we have done for our block), I would suggest internalize connection management also, upto an extend of course.
$20 - for Making Securtiy block(ASP.NET authorization and authenticaiton) database agnostic. Let it use Data Access block so that I dont have to be tied up with SQL server.
$20 - Software factories...
$20 - New blocks for WCF and WWF.



-Rujith

Tom, I'd drop 80-bucks on byte-differential Server Application updates, that bundle a single App-Server image (inclusive of Windows Server updates versus layering them) & pushes it to a passive node (virtual?) that can THEN update the whole Application Image. My context is for Managed-Services partners that support customer-premised Application Servers.

Tom Hollander asks what we would like to see in the next version of the Enterprise Library, so here's

What would you like to see?&amp;nbsp; Seems the team is ramping up again to tackle the next version of the...

Enterprise Library Feedback - Integrate GAT and Workflow