patterns & practices Enterprise Library

1. patterns & practicesEnterprise Library Brian Buttonbbutton@agilestl.comConsultant/Developerpatterns & practices

2. Speaker Introduction • Principal Consultant at Agile Solutions Group • St. Louis-based • Train, mentor, develop, lead teams in agile software development • Consulted in Microsoft patterns & practices since October, 2003 • Smart Client Offline Application Block • Enterprise Library • My badge is orange, not blue • These opinions are mine and mine alone • I do not speak for MS or patterns & practices

3. Welcome to an Exclusive Club!

4. Short History

5. patterns & practices Patterns Application Blocks Reference Architectures Atomic solutions to recurring problems Sub-system-level guidance for common services System-level guidance for common customer scenarios Guides Guidance on architectural principles and cross-cutting issues such as security and performance

6. Application Blocks defined • Reusable, extensible, modifiable • Common mechanism • Logging • Caching • Configuration management… • Reusable fragment of app architecture • User interface process management • Smart disconnected client • Service aggregation…

7. Application Blocks are great, but… • In general feedback has been extremely positive, but there is room for improvement: • Make blocks consistent • Make blocks work well together • Minimize dependencies • On other blocks • On infrastructure • Make it easier to configure blocks • Make evaluation and understanding of blocks easier • Make using blocks easier

8. Introducing “Enterprise Library” • Library of reusable software assets to address common enterprise development challenges • Part of the patterns & practices guidance library • Strong focus on consistency, extensibility, ease of use and integration • v1 produced in partnership with Avanade, leveraging experience from customer engagements and incorporating aspects of their ACA.NET application framework

9. Included Application Blocks • Caching • Data • Exception Handling • Logging • Security • Cryptography (symmetric only) • Common configuration and tooling

10. Let’s build an example app • Simple data access to Northwind • Add a bit of logging • And some exception handling

11. Enterprise Library v1 Architecture Exception Handling Caching Data Access Logging & Instrumentation Security Crypto Config Tooling Config Run-Time

12. Block Code Block Code Block Code Pluggable Providers Block Configuration Code Block Architecture Block Configuration Design Code Unit Tests

13. What comes in the box? • There is no box • Released as guidance • Source code format only • “As-is”, like rest of p&p guidance • You get • All source • All unit tests • Documentation • Quick starts

14. Caching Application Block • Provides a flexible and extensible caching mechanism that can be used at all layers of an application • Supports backing stores that persist cache data into a database or isolated storage, so the data can survive app restarts • Can be used in ASP.NET apps, although the ASP.NET cache is preferred for simple scenarios • Supports similar scenarios to the original caching block, but with a revised architecture to make it more thread- and exception-safe

15. Data Access Application Block • Provides simplified access to the most common data access operations • Aim was to keep much of the simplicity of the original DAAB blocks, but to provide additional features requested by customers • Notable new features: • Support for multiple database types through a factory (SQL Server, Oracle and DB2 out of the box). This provides consistent and portable code (caveats apply!) • Connection strings are stored and managed in external configuration

16. Exception Handling Application Block • Facilitates consistent exception handling behavior at logical boundaries of an application • Allows the creation of “exception policies” which dictate which actions should be taken for specific exception types at the logical boundary • Example: All security exceptions arising from the business layer need to be logged, and the messages sanitized before being propagated to the caller • Actions are extensible; we provide Logging, Wrapping one exception with another, and Replacing one exception with an other • Block has little in common with the existing EMAB which was primarily used to log exceptions

17. Logging & Instrumentation Application Block • Allows applications to log business and operations data to various destinations, which are externally configurable • Replaces the Enterprise Instrumentation Framework and the existing Logging Application Block • Configuration specifies which messages go where, and how they are formatted • Formatters and sinks are extensible. We provide sinks for Event Log, Database, Text File, MSMQ, E-mail, WMI and Windows Event Tracing

18. Security Application Block • Provides a simple API and pluggable implementations of core security primitive operations • Covers 5 security areas: Authentication, Authorization, Roles, Profile and Security Caching • Each module supports extensible plug-in providers. In general we supply plug-ins for common Microsoft infrastructure (AD, AzMan) as well as a light-weight database implementation • Developers can build their own plug-ins to interface with existing security solutions

19. Cryptography Application Block • Provides a simplified approach to implementing common cryptography scenarios • Includes modules for symmetric cryptography and hashing • Each module supports pluggable algorithms and key stores • Supports all .NET crypto algorithms out of the box, or developers can implement their own • Algorithms and keys can be managed through the configuration tool

20. Configuration Application Block • Allows applications to easily read and write configuration data from configurable storage locations • Used by all blocks in Enterprise Library, can also be used by customer blocks, frameworks and applications • Includes two parts: • Configuration Runtime, which applications use at runtime to access configuration data • Configuration Designtime, which provides nodes that are used by the configuration tool to give a simple design-time experience • Configuration can be encrypted and individual elements can be masked in the tool

21. Lots of places to go learn more… • Webcasts • Several overview webcasts plus one webcast per block • http://www.pnplive.com • Hands on Labs • Labs focused on learning to use each block • http://www.pnplive.com/hands_on_labs.htm • Podcasts • Listen to the Enterprise Library developers talk about the culture, experiences, and history of EL V1. • http://www.ronjacobs.com/podcast/default.htm

22. Even more places… • Patterns & Practices • Download and install Enterprise Library • http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices • Enterprise Library GotDotNet Workspace • http://practices.gotdotnet.com/projects/entlib

23. Learn from the authors Enterprise Library team blogs: • Brian Button http://oneagilecoder.agilestl.com • Scott Densmore http://blogs.msdn.com/scottdensmore • Peter Provost http://peterprovost.org • Jim Newkirk http://blogs.msdn.com/jamesnewkirk • Tom Hollander http://blogs.msdn.com/tomholl • Hisham Baz http://blog.hishambaz.com • Tim Shakarian http://dotnetjunkies/WebLog/tshak

24. What’s coming? • Enterprise Library June 2005 • Bug fixes, a few new features, changes to compile on Whidbey • June 30, 2005 or so • Enterprise Library for .NET 2.0 • Same feature set implemented on Whidbey • A little while after Whidbey ships • Enterprise Library V?.? • Solving the next batch of problems • A year or more after Whidbey ships