A year after releasing EntLib 3.1, here’s another release of highly anticipated collection of reusable software components with support for Visual Studio 2008.
If you are new to the Enterprise Library read the Introduction to the Enterprise Library and download, compile and run the QuickStart samples.

This release of Enterprise Library includes the following:

  • Integration with the Unity Application Block
  • Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) 2.0 support and improved instrumentation
  • Performance improvements
  • Pluggable Cache Managers
  • Visual Studio 2008 support
  • Bug fixes

Unity Application Block

The Unity Application Block (Unity) is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection. It provides developers with the following advantages:

  • It provides simplified object creation, especially for hierarchical object structures and dependencies, which simplifies application code.
  • It supports abstraction of requirements; this allows developers to specify dependencies at run time or in configuration and simplify management of crosscutting concerns.
  • It increases flexibility by deferring component configuration to the container.
  • It has a service location capability; this allows clients to store or cache the container. This is especially useful in ASP.NET Web applications where the developers can persist the container in the ASP.NET session or application.

Learn more about Unity Application Block at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc511821.aspx.

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) 2.0 support and improved instrumentation

Enterprise Library 4.0 takes advantage of the improved features in the .NET WMI 2.0 API to provide update capability for configuration exposed through the manageable configuration source. Objects defined in the Enterprise Library configuration, such as databases, trace listeners and cache backing stores are exposed through WMI as a set of classes that you can query and update. If you have the relevant Windows permission to update WMI values, any changes you make to the properties of these classes are reflected back through the manageable configuration source and update the configuration information exposed to your application. Changes do not affect the original configuration file contents and may be overridden by Group Policy.

Pluggable Cache Managers

The caching application block has been refactored to allow developers to replace the CacheManager class with their own implementation if required. This does not affect the API of the application block or the existing CacheManager. Developers can install and configure a custom cache manager implementation using the configuration tools provided that the new class implements the ICacheManager interface and carries the following attribute (C#):
[ConfigurationElementType(typeof(CustomCacheManagerData))]

Visual Studio 2008 Support

Enterprise Library now supports Visual Studio 2008 and the incoming Visual Studio 2008 SP1 as well. The support for Visual Studio 2005 is unknown.

For more information about changes in the Enterprise Library, read the change log. Finally, download and install the installation package.

And, not to forget, congratulations to the EntLib team!