Voting early and often results in a planned point release of WCSF with EntLib 3.0

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I lived in Chicago for 15 years and we had a saying when it came time to vote for public officials - vote early and often. Now that Enterprise Library 3.0 has shipped - see Tom Hollander's blog, we have a number of customers asking for WCSF support for EntLib 3.0. So we see that customers have voted early and often for EntLib 3.0 as it the second most highly requested item on issue tracker.

I have to thank both Mike Puleio our Dev Lead and Dave Hayden Microsoft MVP for influencing our decision on how to help customers to create a specific release EntLib 3.0 and WCSF.

Here is our plan and what we have already done:

  • You can use EntLib 3.0 with WCSF today. We conducted a smoke test with WCSF and the new EntLib 3.0 binaries and found that WCSF worked with EntLib 3.0 today. You will need to change your references to the new binaries.
  • Publish WCSF 1.1 release with EntLib 3.0 binaries. We will create and publish a WCSF 1.1 release which will include EntLib 3.0 binaries, WAP project support and potentially changes to the installer so you can install the factory without requiring .NET 3.0. The WCSF 1.1 release is meant to be a small release for customers that want to use WCSF with EntLib 3.0.
  • Publish WCSF 2.0 with support for EntLib 3.0 capabilities. With the upcoming WCSF 2.0 release, we plan to take advantage of some of the new EntLib 3.0 capabilities. Based upon our current published plan, we will use the EntLib 3.0 validation block to provide guidance on validation for Web Clients. Other items we are considering are UI Composability, Data Driven UIs, UI Responsiveness (AJAX), Deployment and Monitoring, and Complex Page Flows.

The team is currently working on a Smart Client Software Factory update. Once this is complete, the team will work on WCSF 1.1 release. Currently we target this for first half of May. I will update you once we finalize the plan for the release.

I also want to encourage you to add items and vote for items on issue tracker as it does influence our scope for the up coming releases.