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Wither Application Blocks?

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There's been a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) going on around the application blocks. After our TechEd presentations (where we provided a teaser, but little more), everyone was guessing about the future of the blocks. No, they are not going away. No, we will not stop making them. Problem was, we couldn't really address the concerns because we were trying to be careful about not being premature in unveiling our plans (and we were still determining some of the plans, to be honest :>). Well, a couple of weeks ago back in NYC, we finally opened the kimono, so to speak. During the keynote, we announced Enterprise Library, the revision of our reusable software components designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges.Our goal was to bring together new releases of the most widely reusable blocks into a single integrated download. We engaged with Avanade to create the initial release, refactoring the assets from their ACA.NET library into this library with a release planned in December (Avanade has exclusive rights for the three months prior to that, so if you can't wait, contact your local Avanade guy :>). Over time, the we expect the functionality to expand and more partners to engage with us to continue to evolve the library. Based on all of the feedback we've gotten over the years, we focused on some key goals

• Consistency – all the assets will feature consistent design patterns and implementation approaches, configuration mechanisms and tools, documentation, samples, deployment and operational processes.
• Extensibility – all blocks include defined extensibility points which allow developers to customize the behavior of the blocks by ‘plugging in’ their own code.
• Ease of Use – Enterprise Library will offer numerous usability improvements, including easy installation and a config tool, , .
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Integration – the blocks are designed and tested to work well together. It will also be possible to use the blocks individually, thus catering for a range of different usage scenarios.

I'm really excited about the config tool. Even I have to admit that the current configuration is too complicated. Soon, you won't need to hand-edit XML, instead using a nice simple GUI. Plus, since the original application blocks have shipped over a relatively long time period, customers have found that they aren’t always easy to use together. With Enterprise Library all the blocks are designed and tested to work well within a single application. We’ve also heard that people don’t want to be forced to use blocks that they don’t want to. To deal with these competing concerns, almost all the block dependencies have been encapsulated into optional plug-ins that can be used or not used as desired.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, this won't be available until next year. Don't feel the need to delay projects for this because you need to wait. You can still use the blocks that are available today. Like Whidbey, you shouldn't stop development because of an impending release. But also like Whidbey, we are very excited. I expect there to be a technical session on this at the next patterns & practices Summit that we are holding in Virginia (rumors that I endorsed it being there because I wanted to catch a game at Camden Yards are not true--but, yes, I will be catching my Orioles in action). I am hoping to get Avandade to help us present the mateiral. I'll keep you posted on other opportunities as we march to December!

{The Beatles - 1967-1970 Disc 1}

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