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