Enterprise Library Application Blocks question...

[craig]

I was just wondering if anyone else may have incorporated the original
Microsoft Exception Management Application Block (EMAB) or Data Access
Application Block (DAAB) into one of their applications when the blocks were
frist released several years ago?

In the process of trying to upgrage an application to CLR 2.0, I thought it
would make sense to also get the latest application blocks. The are now
called the Enterprise Library Application Blocks and it appears that the
latest is January 2006. However, when I examined them, I realized that
their public APIs appear to have changed dramatically relative to the
originals. This raises the question....what happened to the functionality
provided by the originals?? Has this been incorporated into the .Net
Framework? Is that functionality now considered obsolete, replaced with a
"pattern and practice" that is completely different?? I can't find any
documentation that speaks to this.

Does anyone have any insight?

Thanks!!

 

[Joerg Jooss]

Thus wrote Craig,

I was just wondering if anyone else may have incorporated the original
Microsoft Exception Management Application Block (EMAB) or Data Access
Application Block (DAAB) into one of their applications when the
blocks were frist released several years ago?

In the process of trying to upgrage an application to CLR 2.0, I
thought it would make sense to also get the latest application blocks.
The are now called the Enterprise Library Application Blocks and it
appears that the latest is January 2006. However, when I examined
them, I realized that their public APIs appear to have changed
dramatically relative to the originals. This raises the
question....what happened to the functionality provided by the
originals?? Has this been incorporated into the .Net Framework? Is
that functionality now considered obsolete, replaced with a "pattern
and practice" that is completely different?? I can't find any
documentation that speaks to this.

Does anyone have any insight?

Craig,

while there are probably some things missing in EL 2.0 from earlier versions,
much of the cut functionality is now part of the .NET 2.0 Base Class Library.
The EL 2.0 docs contain migration tips for each block.

Cheers,

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

Craig,

Yes, the APIs have changed from the first incarnation to now, to be more
in line with the current best practices using .NET 2.0.

The functionality provided by the originals is still there, as a matter
of fact, you should still have it. The application blocks (then and now)
come with complete source code, so there is no reason why even if the old
blocks dont work with .NET 2.0 (which I don't think is the case, since there
were not that many breaking changes in the data API, from what I recall)
that you can't tweak the code so that they do.

My recommendation, however, would be to work with the new blocks if you
can.

Hope this helps.

 

[craig]

I really appreciate the feedback. Some of the things we noticed that seem
to be missing in the latest iteration are the BaseApplicationException
(EMAB), which we used to derive many custom exceptions types, and the
SQLHelper (DAAB) we we used extensively.

I will spend some time trying to determine how to repair these breaks in our
code that come with the latest EL. I didn't see very much in the
documentation regarding migration from the original blocks.

Thanks again,
Craig

Craig,

Yes, the APIs have changed from the first incarnation to now, to be
more in line with the current best practices using .NET 2.0.

The functionality provided by the originals is still there, as a matter
of fact, you should still have it. The application blocks (then and now)
come with complete source code, so there is no reason why even if the old
blocks dont work with .NET 2.0 (which I don't think is the case, since
there were not that many breaking changes in the data API, from what I
recall) that you can't tweak the code so that they do.

My recommendation, however, would be to work with the new blocks if you
can.

Hope this helps.

--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

I was just wondering if anyone else may have incorporated the original
Microsoft Exception Management Application Block (EMAB) or Data Access
Application Block (DAAB) into one of their applications when the blocks
were frist released several years ago?

In the process of trying to upgrage an application to CLR 2.0, I thought
it would make sense to also get the latest application blocks. The are
now called the Enterprise Library Application Blocks and it appears that
the latest is January 2006. However, when I examined them, I realized
that their public APIs appear to have changed dramatically relative to
the originals. This raises the question....what happened to the
functionality provided by the originals?? Has this been incorporated
into the .Net Framework? Is that functionality now considered obsolete,
replaced with a "pattern and practice" that is completely different?? I
can't find any documentation that speaks to this.

Does anyone have any insight?

Thanks!!