patterns & practices: Complete Catalog

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Microsoft’s proven recommendations for how to design, develop, deploy, and operate architecturally sound applications for the Microsoft platform.

2009 Releases

	Application Architecture Guide 2.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP - January 2009) This guide provides design-level guidance for the architecture and design of applications built on the .NET Framework. It focuses on the most common types of applications, partitioning application functionality into layers, components, and services, and walks through their key design characteristics. This community technology preview (CTP) release reflects the culmination of work completed to date by the patterns & practices team on the Application Architecture Guide 2.0.
	Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight (February 2009) The Composite Client Application Guidance is designed to help you more easily build modularWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight client applications. This guidance will help you design and build flexible composite WPF client applications—composite applications use loosely coupled, independently evolvable pieces that work together in the overall application.
	Improving Web Services Security: Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF (February 2009) Using end-to-end application scenarios, this guide shows you how to design and implement authentication and authorization in WCF. You will learn how to improve the security of your WCF services through prescriptive guidance including guidelines, a Q&A, practices at a glance, and step-by-step how to articles.

2008 Releases

	Enterprise Library (October 2008) The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a collection of reusable and extensible application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Enterprise Library contains application blocks for Caching, Cryptography, Data Access, Exception Handling, Logging, Dependency Injection, Security and Validation.
	Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) and Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) (February 2008) GAT and GAX expand the capabilities of Visual Studio by allowing architects and developers to author and run guidance packages, such as those included in software factories, to automate key development tasks from within the Visual Studio environment.
	Improving Web Services Security: Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF (February 2009) Using end-to-end application scenarios, this guide shows you how to design and implement authentication and authorization in WCF. You will learn how to improve the security of your WCF services through prescriptive guidance including guidelines, a Q&A, practices at a glance, and step-by-step how to articles.
	SharePoint Guidance (November 2008) The SharePoint Guidance helps architects and developers design, build, test, deploy, and upgrade SharePoint intranet applications. It demonstrates solutions to common architecture, development, and lifecycle management challenges SharePoint projects face.
	Smart Client Software Factory (April 2008) The Smart Client Software Factory provides an integrated set of guidance that assists architects and developers in creating composite smart client applications. The software factory extends Visual Studio 2005 (May 2007 release) and Visual Studio 2008 (April 2008 release) with additional guidance that helps to automate designing and developing occasionally-connected composite smart client applications. The resulting application architecture is both extensible and customizable.
	Unity Application Block (October 2008) The Unity Application Block (Unity) is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container. It facilitates building loosely coupled applications and provides developers with simplified object creation, abstraction of requirements, increased flexibility, and service location capability.
	Unity Application Block 1.2 for Silverlight (December 2008) The Unity Application Block (Unity) is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container. It facilitates building loosely coupled applications and provides developers with simplified object creation, abstraction of requirements, increased flexibility, and service location capability. This release of Unity is a port of Unity Application Block 1.2 to Microsoft Silverlight 2.0. Silverlight has some differences from the desktop common language runtime (CLR), so some capabilities and packaging of the Unity container have been adjusted in this release.
	Web Client Software Factory (February 2008) The patterns & practices Web Client Software Factory is a comprehensive set of guidelines, assets, and automation that developers use to create architecturally sound, modular, Web applications, with the latest technologies from Microsoft, such as ASP.NET 2.0 and Windows Workflow Foundation.
	Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition (February 2008) The Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition (also known as the Service Factory) is an integrated collection of resources designed to help you quickly and consistently build Web services that adhere to well-known architecture and design patterns. These resources consist of patterns and architecture topics in the form of written guidance and models with code generation in the form of tools integrated with Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.

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2007 Releases

	Caching Application Block (May 2007) The Caching Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library which provides a flexible and extensible caching mechanism for use in client and server-side .NET development projects.
	Cryptography Application Block (May 2007) The Cryptography Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library which makes it easier to include cryptographic functionality in .NET applications. The block provides a simple interface to DPAPI, symmetric encryption and hashing, and uses the Enterprise Library configuration tool to simplify key management.
	Data Access Application Block (May 2007) The Data Access Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library which reduces the amount of custom code that you need to create, test, and maintain when building data access layers in .NET applications.
	Exception Handling Application Block (May 2007) The Exception Handling Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library that makes it easier to implement consistent exception handling policies at logical tiers in an application. Exception policies can be configured to perform tasks such as logging exceptions, wrapping or replacing exception types.
	Logging Application Block (May 2007) The Logging Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library that allows developers to instrument their applications with logging and tracing calls. Log and trace messages can be filtered, formatted and routed to a choice of trace listeners, including the event log, text files, database or WMI.
	Microsoft ESB Guidance for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (November 2007) Guidance, components, and frameworks demonstrating how to develop an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform, using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2, and how to extend your existing messaging and integration solutions.
	Policy Injection Application Block (May 2007) The Policy Injection Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library which allows developers to specify the crosscutting behavior of objects in terms of a set of policies. Crosscutting concerns are the necessary tasks, features, or processes that are common across different objects. Examples are logging, authorization, validation, and instrumentation.
	Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications (September 2007) This guide shows you an end-to-end approach for implementing performance testing. Whether you are new to performance testing, or looking for ways to improve your current performance testing approach, you will find insights that you can tailor for your specific scenarios.
	Security Application Block (May 2007) The Security Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library that builds on the capabilities of the Microsoft .NET Framework to help you perform authentication, authorization, check role membership and access profile information.
	Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (September 2007) This guide shows you how to make the most of Team Foundation Server. It starts with the end in mind, but shows you how to incrementally adopt TFS for your organization. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts.
	Validation Application Block (May 2007) The Validation Application Block is a component of Enterprise Library which provides a common approach to defining validation rules for your business objects that allows them to be reused across different layers of your application.

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2006 Releases

Building Secure ASP.NET Applications: Authentication, Authorization, and Secure Communication (January 2006)
This guide presents a practical, scenario-driven approach to designing and building secure ASP.NET applications for Windows 2000 and .NET Framework version 1.0. It focuses on the key elements of authentication, authorization, and secure communication within and across the tiers of distributed .NET Web applications.

Mobile Client Software Factory (July 2006)
The Mobile Client Software Factory provides an integrated set of guidance assets to help architects and developers create line-of-business Windows Mobile applications that interact with back-end systems over a variety of networks.

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2005 Releases

	Security Engineering Index (August 2005) This page provides an index to available and emerging guidance for patterns & practices Security Engineering. To build secure applications, security engineering activities must be an integral part of your software development practices.
	Security Guidance for Applications Index (August 2005) This page provides an index of patterns & practices Security Guidance for applications. The resources include guides and books available on MSDN together with modular content of various types including scenarios and solutions, guidelines, explained, checklists, and How Tos.
	Security Guidance for .NET Framework 2.0 (August 2005) This page provides an index to the patterns & practices Security Guidance for .NET Framework 2.0 project. You can use the guidance to improve both the security of your applications and your approach to building secure applications.
	Smart Client - Composite Application UI Block (December 2005) Are you building applications with complex user interfaces? Do you want to take full advantage of the power of the Microsoft Windows desktop? Check out this recently released application block that provides guidance on building world-class, enterprise ready, client applications. Available both in C# and Visual Basic .NET.
	Testing .NET Application Blocks - Version 1.0 (January 2005) Testing .NET Application Blocks covers many testing areas that were used during testing and verification of the various application blocks provided by Microsoft's patterns & practices group, such as functional, globalization, performance, integration, and security. The guide uses code examples, sample test cases, and checklists to demonstrate how to plan and implement each type of test.
	Threat Modeling Web Applications (May 2005) This guidance presents the patterns & practices approach to creating threat models for Web applications. Threat modeling is an engineering technique you can use to help you identify threats, attacks, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures that could affect your application.
	Upgrading Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (October 2005) Upgrading Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET is the complete technical guide to upgrading Visual Basic 6 applications to Visual Basic .NET, covering all upgrade topics from APIs to ZOrders. It shows how to fix upgrade issues with forms, language, data access, and COM+ Services, and how to upgrade applications with XML Web services, ADO.NET, and .NET remoting. It also provides big-picture architectural advice, a reference of function and object model changes, hundreds of before-and-after code samples, and a CD packed with useful examples.
	Web Service Security Guidance (December 2005) Provides architectural, design, and implementation guidance for applying security to Web services by using Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 and the .NET Framework 2.0. Includes scenarios, patterns, decision matrices, and QuickStarts to help you make the most appropriate decisions based on your solution’s requirements.

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2004 Releases

	Describing the Enterprise Architectural Space (June 2004) This document presents an organizing table that describes the enterprise architectural space, shows relationships among artifacts in the space, and demonstrates how different roles in your enterprise view enterprise architecture. This document also demonstrates how pattern authors can use this table to organize existing patterns and to identify areas where patterns are not currently documented.
	Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability (April 2004) This guide provides end-to-end guidance for managing performance and scalability throughout your application life cycle to reduce risk and lower total cost of ownership. It provides a framework that organizes performance into a handful of prioritized categories where your choices affect performance and scalability success. Information is segmented by role to make it more relevant and actionable. This guide suggests processes and steps for modeling performance, as well as measuring, testing, and tuning your applications. Expert guidance is also provided for improving the performance of managed code, ASP.NET, Enterprise Services, Web services, remoting, ADO.NET, XML, and SQL Server.
	Integration Patterns (June 2004) Integration Patterns explains how patterns were used to design and build a baseline integration architecture within a representative customer scenario. The guide presents a catalog of 18 integration patterns including implementations that use the Microsoft platform.
	Smart Client Architecture and Design Guide (June 2004) The Smart Client Architecture and Design Guide gives advice on how to overcome architectural challenges and design issues when building smart client solutions. It also provides guidance on how to combine the benefits of traditional rich client applications with the manageability of thin client applications.

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2003 Releases

	Application Interoperability: Microsoft .NET and J2EE (December 2003) Application Interoperability: Microsoft .NET and J2EE shows how to enable interoperability between enterprise class applications based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Microsoft .NET using service interfaces, use case interoperability adapters, and use case adapter factories. It covers how to add .NET Framework applications at the Presentation or the Business tier, together with implementing interoperability at the Data tier using message queuing and shared databases.
	Caching Architecture Guide for .NET Framework Applications (April 2003) This document provides caching guidance for developers and architects using the Microsoft .NET Framework. It introduces the concepts involved in caching, discusses the technologies that can be used to provide caching facilities, and describes the mechanisms you should implement to cache data in a distributed application. It contains recommendations and best practices for all aspects of caching in .NET-based applications.
	Data Patterns (June 2003) Data Patterns extends previous patterns work by applying it to data problems and showing how to solve them by using SQL Server. These patterns are about the problems faced by those who build the data services in an enterprise class business solution. The guide introduces patterns and why they are important to database designers and administrators, as well as architects and developers. It then presents a catalog of 12 architecture, design, and implementation patterns that are organized to help you locate the right combination of patterns to solve your problem.
	Deploying .NET Framework-based Applications (June 2003) This guide will give you the information necessary to plan and implement the effective deployment of your Framework-based applications. If your organization is developing .NET Framework-based applications, you face the challenge of deploying those applications efficiently and reliably throughout your environment. If you are experienced in the area of deployment, some of the challenges will be familiar. However, there are a number of new technologies in .NET Framework-based applications, and therefore several considerations that are unique to deploying them.
	Design and Implementation Guidelines for Web Clients (November 2003) Design and Implementation Guidelines for Web Clients provides advice on how best to implement logic in the presentation layer of a distributed application. This guide is designed to accompany the User Interface Process Application Block, which provides a template implementation for user interface process components.
	Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET (June 2003) Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET embraces existing work in the patterns community, contributes new patterns, and shows how to implement these patterns in .NET. The guide explains how a pattern documents simple, proven mechanisms, and shows how collections of patterns provide a common language for developers and architects. The guide then presents a catalog of 32 architecture, design, and implementation patterns that are organized to help you locate the right combination of patterns to solve your problem.
	Guidelines for Application Integration (December 2003) This guide examines in detail what application integration means and describes the capabilities needed to enable application integration. It discusses the major challenges involved and shows how you can adapt your application integration environment to meet those challenges. It also examines the Microsoft® software products and services you can use to help you design your application integration environment.
	Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures (June 2003) This guide gives you a solid foundation for designing, building, and configuring secure ASP.NET Web applications. Whether you have existing applications or are building new ones, you can apply the guidance to help you make sure that your Web applications are hack-resilient.
	.NET Data Access Architecture Guide (June 2003) This document provides guidelines for implementing an ADO.NET-based data access layer in a multi-tier .NET-based application. It focuses on a range of common data access tasks and scenarios, and presents guidance to help you choose the most appropriate approaches and techniques.

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2002 Releases

	Application Architecture for .NET: Designing Applications and Services (December 2002) This guide provides architecture-level and design-level guidance for application architects and developers that need to build distributed solutions with the Microsoft® .NET Framework. This guide assumes you are familiar with .NET component development and the basic principles of a layered distributed application design. This guide is most critical to those that architect and design applications or services; recommend appropriate technologies and products for applications or services; make design decisions to meet functional and nonfunctional requirements; or choose appropriate communications mechanisms for applications or services. A new Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of this content is now available.
	Designing Application-Managed Authorization (December 2002) This guide provides guidelines for designing and coding application-managed authorization for single or multi-tier applications that are based on Microsoft® .NET. It focuses on common authorization tasks and scenarios, and it provides information that helps you choose the best approaches and techniques. This guide is intended for architects and developers.
	Designing Data Tier Components and Passing Data Through Tiers (August 2002) This guide covers data access and representation of business data in a distributed application and provides guidance to help you choose the most appropriate way to expose, persist, and pass data through the application tiers.
	Team Development with Visual Studio .NET and Visual SourceSafe (January 2002) This guide provides guidance and recommendations to enable you to set up a team development environment and work successfully within it. If you are beginning a .NET team development project, you first need to understand how to establish development processes that work in a team environment. You need to know how to set up and work with the team development features supported by the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET–integrated development environment (IDE), and you also need to be aware of the development techniques (such as how to set assembly references in the correct way) that must be followed by your development team members to ensure that your team functions successfully.

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2001 Releases

Authentication in ASP.NET: .NET Security Guidance (August 2001)
This document offers guidance to the application architect who is responsible for designing a security model for a Web-based application running on the .NET platform. The guide explains the relationship between IIS and ASP.NET from a security standpoint and describes the set of available authentication methods. It also contains procedures that can help you choose the most appropriate authentication method based on your particular application scenario.

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