Welcome to the era of software reuse! Microsoft Enterprise Library helps accelerate development by providing reusable components and guidance on proven practices. If you build applications that run on the Microsoft .NET Framework, whether they are enterprise-level business applications or even relatively modest Windows® Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), or ASP.NET applications, you can benefit from using Enterprise Library. This guide helps you to quickly grasp what Enterprise Library can do for you, presents examples, and makes it easier for you to start experimenting with Enterprise Library. Enterprise Library is made up of a series of application blocks, each aimed at managing specific cross-cutting concerns.

The guide will walk you through the most common usage scenarios for each of the functional application blocks, including:

• Improving performance by utilizing a local in-memory or isolated storage cache.
• Calling into your database stored procedures and managing the results exposed as a sequence of objects for client side querying.
• Incorporating cryptography mechanisms to protect your data.
• Designing and implementing a consistent strategy for managing exceptions that occur in various architectural layers of your application.
• Implementing system logging through the wide variety of out-of-the box logging sinks or your custom provider.
• Performing structured and easy-to-maintain validation using attributes and rules sets.

The guide also demonstrates various ways of configuring Enterprise Library blocks. Let Enterprise Library do the heavy lifting for you and spend more time focusing on your business logic and less on application plumbing.

“You are holding in your hands a book that will make your life as an enterprise developer a whole lot easier.” Scott Guthrie Corporate Vice-President, Microsoft .NET Developer Platform