It's the next, better version of the Microsoft Application Blocks you've seen
until today. With a few changes:
It's a suite of 7 built in , new and improved application blocks. They
work together, as a team to provide easier and better configuration,
management, usability and consistency into our development experience.
They can use each other, but they *don't have to*! You can write your own
"providers" and hook them up. Today, for example, you can't use the Logging
Application Block without using the EIF framework with it (with out major code
changes). With Entlib(the nickname you'll be hearing a lot from now on)
there's a whole extensibility architecture in place.
The idea is that on top of 7 existing built in blocks inside Entlib, the
community is encourages to extend and create other blocks that play with each
other using the extensibility mechanisms found in the library. Yep. Plug
ins.
All configuration is done via XML. of ALL the blocks. But the killer
feature here is that its all done in *one* single place - using a
configuration GUI that can map and set properties for all application blocks
your application will need. No more messing around with error prone XML. Te
Configuration GUI will help you validate the properties you set, and do the
hard work for you while you sent a bunch of properties on tree nodes.
The application blocks have been enhanced. For example, the new version of
the Data Access block is capable of using an encrypted connection string. It
does it magically for you by using an all new encryption application block!
The next version of the logging block is perfectly capable of talking with
the data access block and saving your traces to the database. It's the
replacement for EIF ,really, with many abilities and many providers. If you
were looking into Log4Net or EIF, you should seriously check this one
out.
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