Solution development fundamentals cover the cross-cutting aspects of solution development, such as security, caching, data access, validation, exception management, and so on. It also includes application architecture, development process, the software development life cycle (SDLC), and application life cycle guidance. You will find guidance and patterns that are generally applicable to solution development regardless of the specific architecture or scenario.

Active Releases

• Enterprise Library. Enterprise Library is a collection of application blocks that address common cross-cutting concerns that developers face when developing applications. The latest version of Enterprise Library (version 5.0) was released in April 2010 and includes support for Visual Studio 2010, as well as many performance and functionality improvements.
• Unity. Unity is our implementation of a dependency injection container. We recently released Unity 2.0 (also part of the latest version of Enterprise Library) which includes a number of key features, including support for policy-based interception and support for Silverlight. Unity provides a mature and stable foundation for building high-quality, flexible, pattern-based libraries and reference implementations.
• A Guide to Claims–based Identity and Access Control. This guide gives you enough information to evaluate claims-based identity as a possible option when you're planning a new application or making changes to an existing one. It is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates Web applications and services that require identity information about their users.
• Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition. This guide provides design-level guidance for the architecture and design of applications built on the .NET Framework.
• Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications. This guide shows you an end-to-end approach for implementing performance testing for your Web applications.

General Guidance

• Guidance Automation (GAT/GAX)
• Describing the Enterprise Architectural Space — June 2004
• Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET — June 2003
• Microsoft .NET/COM Migration and Interoperability — August 2001

Enterprise Library

• Enterprise Library 4.1 — October 2008

Unity Application Block

• Unity Application Block 1.2 for Silverlight — December 2008
• Unity Application Block 1.2 — October 2008

Process

• Visual Studio Team System — September 2007

Technical Articles

• Write Less Code and Play More Golf — Getting to Know Enterprise Library 4.0
• Inject Some Life into Your Applications — Getting to Know the Unity Application Block
• Getting to Know the Team System Management Model Designer
• Exploring the Factory Design Pattern
• Exploring the Observer Design Pattern

Retired Releases

General Guidance

• Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005 — October 2005
• .NET Data Access Architecture Guide — June 2003
• Asynchronous Invocation Application Block for .NET — June 2003
• Data Patterns — June 2003
• Deploying .NET Framework-based Applications — June 2003
• Caching Architecture Guide for .NET Framework Applications — April 2003
• Application Architecture for .NET: Designing Applications and Services — December 2002
• Designing Data Tier Components and Passing Data Through Tiers — August 2002
• Exploring the Singleton Design Pattern — February 2002
• Monitoring in .NET Distributed Application Design — August 2001
• Exception Management Architecture Guide

Enterprise Library

• Enterprise Library 4.0 — May 2008
• Enterprise Library 3.1 — May 2007
• Enterprise Library 2.0 — January 2006

Unity Application Block

• Unity Application Block 1.1 — May 2008

Performance

• Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability — April 2004

Process

• Team Development with Visual Studio .NET and Visual SourceSafe — January 2002

Security

• Security Guidance for Applications

Testing

• Testing .NET Application Blocks Version 1.0 — January 2005
• Testing Software Patterns — October 2003
• Production Debugging for .NET Framework Applications — November 2002

Please refer to the patterns & practices: Retired section for all retired offerings.

Last updated June 2010

About Microsoft patterns & practices

Recommendations on how to design and develop custom applications using the Microsoft platform.

By using patterns & practices offerings, you can accelerate the design and development of your custom applications, reduce project technical risk, and position yourself to take advantage of future Microsoft technologies. Each patterns & practices offering contains a combination of written documentation and re-usable source code. Many also include a reference implementation. This combination provides you with a solid starting point for your application, and a set of proven practices to aid your development.

For more information, visit the patterns & practices Developer Center.