Amazon S3 Sink for Semantic Logging Service – Enterprise Library 6

Event Source API was introduced in .net framework 4.5 to support semantic logs. It allows an application to author events. These events are generated as ETW events which can be consumed in-proc or out-proc. For a general in-proc consumption, the API has introduced EventSourceListener type.

Semantic Logging Application Block (SLAB) has developed on top of EventSource API with more focus on event’s consumption. It has introduced sinks for consumption which are utilized by ETW event listener in the application block. These events are destination specific. The Pattern & Practices (p&p) team...

Enterprise Library 6 is out!

Enterprise Library provides an excellent way to keep the cross-cutting concerns outside your main application code. Microsoft Pattern & Practices team released new version of Enterprise Library last week. This was released on 25th April and this is Version 6 of the library. Full version of the library and source code can be downloaded from Microsoft's Download Center.



The documentation can be downloaded directly form Pattern & Practices team's codeplex page. The documentation is still in preview version and is not updated on MSDN. Still this can be downloaded from the main page. In addition to the Enterprise Library documentation, it also includes the migration guide for migrating applications from Enterprise Library 5. You can also find the reference PDF for Unity Application Block version 3 which is provided as part of the new version of Enterprise Library.



List of Application Blocks in Enterprise Library 6
The library seems to be released with exciting new features in existing application block. It includes a new application block with the name Semantic Logging Application Block. Transient Fault Handling application Block seems to have been added from Azure Integration Pack for Enterprise Library 5. Enterprise Library 6 includes the following application blocks.

1. Data Access Application Block
2. Exception Handling Application Block
3. Logging Application Block
4. Policy Injection Application Block
5. Semantic Logging Application Block
6. Transient Fault Handling Application Block
7. Unity Application Block
8. Validation Application Block

As discussed above, Semantic Application Block is the newest in the list. This is supposed to be built on top of EventSource provided in .net framework 4.5 for structured logging. EventSource provides structured logging support for ETW events. Semantic Application Block is supposed to add support structured logging by specializing EventSource, where the logs can be sinked to Azure or SQL Server database.

There are other application blocks which used to be in Enterprise Library 5 and haven't been migrated over to EntLib6. They include the following:

1. Cryptography Application Block
2. Caching Application Block
3. Validation Application Block

Back in 2010, we did discuss about how we can use Validation Application Block in an MVVM based application.

Unity 3.0
The release also includes a new version of unity application block. This is version 3 of Unity. As we know Unity provides the support of Dependency Injection for .net applications. This is a container based approach to Inversion of Control. Unity 3 extends Dependency Injection Windows store Apps and deeper integration with ASP.net MVC and Web API.

Requirements for Enterprise Library 6
Enterprise Library 6 only works with .net framework 4.5 and .net for Windows Store Apps (for Unity and Transient fault handling application block. It cannot be used side by side with existing Enterprise Library 5 binaries. If you are still on .net framework 4.0, you will need to make a decision about migrating to .net framework 4.5 first before moving to the new version of the enterprise library.

Using Enterprise Library Application Blocks
You can download the list of the binaries from the link provided in download section to use enterprise library's application blocks in your code. Pattern & Practices team suggests using Nuget for this purpose. For ease of developers, Pattern & Practices team has provided these application blocks in the form of Nuget packages. These Nuget packages can be used individually as per the requirement. Just add the appropriate package to your project using Nuget



Still To Come
This is the view of the release from top. There are other minor improvements and updates which require more detailed discussions. I am planning a few posts about the updates in Enterprise Library 6. You might find me blogging about them next month. You can find release notes here.

Boston Code Camp Oct 2012

It has been a great experience participating in Boston Code camp as a speaker. As always, the code camp was an opportunity to have great technology conversations with like minded technology enthusiasts. Packt gave me three free ebooks and a 20% discount code for the folks who attended the event.

With Nick Parker and Ben Lambert

With John Zablocki

With Bob Goodearl and other codecamp presenter

Midori ( A non-windows operating system by Microsoft)

Today I want to discuss something about a Microsoft Operating system which is still in its nuance. No! It is not a new version of Windows. The codename for the operating system is Midori. This is successor of Microsoft's other Operating system which was named as Singularity. Singularity is available for download for free on Microsoft website. Compared to Singularity, this would not be a research project but a complete commercial operating system project.

With the advent of Web 2.0 and Cloud computing, this is all about sharing. This could be sharing of pictures, movies, games. But this could also be sharing of resources to make systems having capabilities which no one has ever thought of.

Midori is designed to be the future of Cloud computing. This would be a whole new operating system with architecture different from Windows. The architecture is named as Asynchronous Promise Architecture. The local and distributed resource would not be different for applications to consume. It is a net centric, component based operating system which is designed for connected systems. This would be completely developed in managed code. This would not depend upon the application installed on local systems. The hardware, on which the OS is run, would also not be a dependency. It is said that the core principal of Midori's design would be concurrency. This
would be an asynchronous only architecture designed for task concurrency
and parallel use of resources (both local and distributed). This would also
support different topologies, like Client-Server, Peer-to-Peer, multi-tier,
forming a heterogeneous mesh.

It appears that the operating system would be based on Service Oriented architecture with different components scattered in the cloud providing different services to the operating systems. Some say that the objects would be immutable like String in .net.

The kernel would be divided into two parts. One is Micro Kernel which is non-managed. This layer would be encapsulated in a managed Kernel services layer which would provide other functionalities. The scheduling framework is called Resource Management Infrastructure (RMI). This is a power based scheduler to support mobile devices.

The one thing that Microsoft will have to focus on is the co-existence of this new system with Microsoft Windows and applications designed to run on it. May be a runtime is provided just to support the applications designed to run on Microsoft Windows. When I am saying this, I mean COM based applications because managed applications would have no problem in running on a new CLR designed for Midori like we have MONO for Linux. So it can be seen that the applications software running on this, would be coded in .net languages.

Let's wait for the interesting things Microsoft releases about this new Operating System.