Updated 1/20/2006
I hope you’re not still using the Microsoft Data Access Block and sibling Blocks in your code. If you are, I hope you have a good excuse! Microsoft released Enterprise Library for .NET 1.1 about a year ago to replace the old Blocks. It was co-developed by Microsoft and Avanade, and Avanade still carries on a proprietary enhanced version called ACA.NET. The former Blocks that were incorporated into Enterprise Library gained a more unified programming and extensibility model, improved documentation and samples and an extensible GUI configuration tool. We used Enterprise Library throughout most of 2005 on a large WinForms app, and it worked great. I recommend it to every .NET development team.
Since then, I’ve moved on to Visual Studio 2005 like many of you, and we’ve all been (patiently?) waiting for Microsoft patterns & practices to rework Enterprise Library for .NET 2.0. A couple deadlines passed with no code, but it’s finally here. You really owe it to yourself and your dev team to check out the excellent work being provided by the patterns & practices team.
