David Hayden [MVP C#]

I was wondering just the other day when Enterprise Library 4.0 might be released and low and behold today was the day.

There are no new application blocks with Enterprise Library 4.0, but there are a few enhancements to existing blocks and the much anticipated Unity IoC Integration. If you so desire, you can now use Unity to wire up your application blocks when using Enterprise Library in your applications. This is, of course, optional. You can use the existing configuration model that has been at the core of Enterprise Library since 2.0 and replaced the Configuration Application Block.

You can download Enterprise Library 4.0 here. I recommend you visit the landing page to learn about all the particulars of Enterprise Library 4.0.

If you are a veteran Enterprise Library developer, it is essentially business as usual unless you choose to use Unity for configuration and you haven't played with it yet. For more information on Unity, I have a couple of Unity Screencasts and a number of Unity Tutorials on PnPGuidance:

Unity Dependency Injection IoC Screencast
Unity IoC - Dependency Injection in ASP.NET MVC Framework Screencast

Unity is pretty simple to use as dependency injection / IoC tools go.

Over the years I have probably written well over 50 - 100 tutorials on Enterprise Library. Down right pathetic as to how much I have written on Enterprise Library actually :) It was a great learning experience, however. For the most part all of the tutorials still apply, so if you are just learning Enterprise Library feel free to go through them. Even though I broke them down into Enterprise Library 2.0 Tutorials and Enterprise Library 3.0 Tutorials, the information is still accurate for Enterprise Library 4.0 with possibly a few exceptions.

I often get asked where to start with all the tutorials, so I usually just point people to the following introductory tutorials that focus on the fundamentals for about each application block.

• Enterprise Library 2.0 Data Access Application Block
• Enterprise Library 2.0 Logging Application Block Part I - TraceListeners
• Enterprise Library 2.0 Logging Application Block Part II - Simple ASP.NET 2.0 Website Example - Logging Unhandled Exceptions
• Enterprise Library 2.0 Logging Application Block Part III - Programmatically Using Logging Application Block With No Configuration File
• Enterprise Library 2.0 Logging Application Block Part IV - Conclusion - Free .NET Tutorials and Examples
• Caching Application Block - Enterprise Library 2.0 - IsolatedStorage and Database Caching
• Cryptography Application Block in Enterprise Library 2.0 - Symmetric Encryption Providers - RijndaelManaged ( AES ) - Part I
• Hashing Passwords Using Enterprise Library 2.0 Cryptography Application Block - SHA1Managed Hash Provider
• Validation Application Block in Enterprise Library 3.0 - Using Validation Facade Class - Part I
• Validation Application Block in Enterprise Library 3.0 - ValidationFactory Class - Part II
• Validation Application Block Ruleset in Enterprise Library 3.0 - Enterprise Library 3.0 Tutorials - Part III
• Validation Application Block - Rules in External XML Configuration File - App.Config Web.Config - Enterprise Library 3.0 - Part IV
• Environmental Overrides in Enterprise Library 3.0 - Managing Development, Test, Staging, and Production Configurations Made Easy!
• Policy Injection Application Block Sample - Enterprise Library 3.0 Coolness
• Policy Injection Application Block Example - Enterprise Library 3.0 Tutorials
• Enterprise Library 3.0 Policy Injection Application Block - Crosscutting Concerns vs. Business Logic in AOP

You can also find some Enterprise Library Tutorials on PnPGuidance.

Hope this helps,

Dave