Snowball - The Blog

Since I didn't spend much time on the computer these last days, I hadn't noticed that last Friday, December 22nd, Enterprise Library V3.0 CTP was released! Shame on me

If you don't know what EntLib is, here's a short description: The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application blocks are a type of guidance, provided as source code that can be used "as is," extended, or modified by developers to use on enterprise development projects.

I used it myself in 2 projects, and I'm very pleased with it.
In V3.0, some new features will (of course) be included, which will make it more complete. No complete lists is available, but here's an overview.

Core

• Source Code installer
• Partial Trust Support
• Strong-Named Binary Assemblies

Validation Application Block

• Core validation API
• Minimal Validator Library
• Attaching validators to objects via attributes
• Attaching validators to objects via configuration
• Not included yet (but in the works): Configuration tool support, complete validator library, integration with ASP.NET, Windows Forms, WCF etc.

Data Access Application Block

• SQL Server Compact Edition Support
• New Database.UpdateDatabase overload with updateBatchSize parameter

Configuration Tool

• Visual Studio IDE integration
• AppSettings support
• Encryption support

Application Block Software Factory

• Templates and recipes for creating application blocks and provider libraries
• Preliminary documentation

Strong Naming Guidance Package

• Recipes to assist in strong-naming and updating [InternalsVisibleTo] across multiple projects

If you're like me, you are gonna play with it already! So, download it here on the new Codeplex-site!