Ahhh. Enterprise Library...

I have been using the Application Blocks that MS published for a few years now. I have used the Data Access Block exclusively for the base of my Data Access Layer for at least two years now.

I had heard about the Enterprise Library release in January. I read some of what it offered. It seemed to be more of a wrapper of several application blocks at the time. Boy was I right.

MS has done a nice job of placing such a great wrapper around stuff that I would have to normally manually do. For example, I needed to develop a login procedure that used hashed passwords. I know its been done for some time now, but it's always been a very manual process. The EL has a cryptography class that is very well executed. In about 3 lines of code I had something that would retrieve my password from the db (hashed value) accept my password from the user (clear text) and one method returns a bool letting me know that the password given would in act match the hash in the db. Nice.

The best part about the EL is the Configuration Console. It's a simple little configurator that comes with the package. It simply opens up your .config file you point it to and lets you add blocks and configure them properly. That was always my biggest peeve with the blocks as they were, because some blocks required other blocks to work, and they had to be configured just so. Now MS has taken that load off the developer and given us a way to deliver Enterprise level software easily.

Thanks MS :)