Whether you agree or disagree with the guidance and solutions coming out of Microsoft Patterns & Practices, you have to give this team respect for all that they do to help developers understand proven practices and guiding principles in their day-to-day development. Enterprise Library has been an incredible value to me and other developers worldwide. Prism is invaluable for developing composite WPF and Silverlight Applications. The Web Client Software Factory did a fanstastic job at helping developers understand how to develop composite web applications. And, the Web Service Software Factory helped developers understand how to implement ASMX and WCF in Enterprise Application. Couple that with the amazing documentation that goes way beyond helping you use the guidance; it also helps you understand the principles and patterns, key scenarios to using the guidance, and when not to use the guidance. All I can say is job well done!
Each year I run a Day of Patterns & Practices in Tampa. We are gearing up for another one as soon as Enterprise Library 5.0 is released in some form. As part of the next Day of Patterns & Practices, we will also be presenting the new Data Access Guidance being kicked off by Patterns & Practices. This project is actually a joint effort between Patterns & Practices and members of the Data Platform Team. The guidance appears to center around a reference implementation that will involve the use of Microsoft Technologies:
- ASP.NET MVC
- WPF Client
- Silverlight Client
- ADO.NET Entity Framework ( I suspect )
- etc...
Because they are using ASP.NET MVC, you can expect we will be discussing this guidance as part of the Tampa ASP.NET MVC Developer Group as well!!
Huge thanks to the Patterns & Practices and Data Platform Teams for working on such guidance. Learn more at the CodePlex Project.
David Hayden
