Fritz Onion Returns: ASP.NET 2.0 Webcasts

Fritz is at it again!  Having completed a 15-part series of webcasts on ASP.NET 1.1 development (based on his fantastic "Essential ASP.NET" book), he's back to conduct another set of 15 one-hour sessions, this time on ASP.NET 2.0.  The webcasts be from August 4th to December 1st.

Details and registration at http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/essentialaspnet.mspx

-Chris

P.S.  His complete ASP.NET 1.1 series is available on that page as well.

Upcoming New England Developer Events

Here's the current batch of upcoming sessions, meetings and events coming up for those of us lucky enough to live in New England!

-Chris

P.S.  Can anyone tell me why CommunityServer is insisting upon reformatting my TABLE tags to remove the borders (and other settings)?

Enterprise Library and Whidbey

As announced by Tom Hollander, the 1.1 version of Enterprise Library is available.

Tim Shakarian, involved with the original Enterprise Library (and who gave a great talk on EntLib that I blogged about last year), has posted commentary about the recently released 1.1 version of Enterprise Library.  In particular, Tim questions the wisdom of advertising to potential users that EntLib 1.1 "works" with Whidbey:

"The number one consequence of this release is customer confusion over how to solve a particular problem on the platform, something that EntLib is supposed to alleviate. Since Whidbey deprecates a lot of EntLib's features, there can be multiple ways to solve a given problem."

"The message from PAG should have been, "We do not recommend Enterprise Library 1.1 for Whidbey development. We will not alter 1.1 to support Whidbey. We will release Enterprise Library 2.0 which will provide guidance Whidbey development"."

This is of course a valid point and I agree with the spirit of what Tim is saying.  Unfortunately, to a large extent the PAG team can't win if they do or don't on this one.  Enabling support of 1.1 with Whidbey prompts the complaints such as Tim's that EntLib is for gaps between the current framework and enterprise needs.  Those gaps are certainly different with 2.0, so why confuse users by offering 1.x solutions for them?  If they don't support 1.1 with Whidbey, the customers who have come to rely on existing EntLib bits will complain that they don't have the resources to switch from their existing dependencies on EntLib 1.x to EntLib 2.0, but need to make a platform shift to Whidbey. 

As a member of the PAG's Customer Advisory Board, I do see that Tom and company are very concerned about getting the proper message out to the development community.  However, they are also faced with the challenge of not interfering with customers' needs to migrate to Whidbey.  They are working very hard on content and messaging for the Whidbey timeframe and more information will be coming. 

There is a definite challenge in determining what the scope, timeframes and intentions of EntLib should be in relation to Whidbey, so comments like Tim's that question the status quo really do help shape that strategy.

In fact, Tim's post prompted Darron to post his thoughts on the matter:

"Tom Hollander's 'What's the Deal' post made it apparent to me that the group understands that the gap got smaller with Whidbey, so they are trying to figure out the areas that the gap will be. This is very difficult, and I don't expect them to know all. I just think that they could have released this, and have it work with Whidbey, but not declare it to be for Whidbey. In other words, say "for 1.1, use EntLib, for 2.0, wait for the release bits.""

Are you concerned about what choices to make moving forward to Whidbey?  Will you be taking advantage of the option to use 1.1, if only temporarily, as you migrate to Whidbey?  Can you recommend actions for PAG team to address your needs?

-Chris