The previous version of Enterprise Library's Configuration Application Block was called the Configuration Management Application Block. In Enterprise Library, the word Management has been dropped from all application blocks that had it as part of their name. There are a few reasons for this. First, configuration management is a larger discipline than this block really addresses. Second, all the application blocks provide management of some kind, so including Management as part of the name seemed superfluous. Like the Configuration Management Application Block, Enterprise Library's Configuration Application Block is designed to ease the burden of storing and retrieving configuration information from an underlying data store and ensure the security and integrity of the configuration data. At the heart of the Configuration Application Block is the ability to decouple read and write operations for configuration data from the specifics of its underlying data store. It accomplishes this through StorageProviders, objects that transfer data between an application and a particular configuration data store (e.g., an XML file, the Windows Registry, or a database). The Configuration Application Block also provides a simple application programming interface for performing the most common configuration tasks, like reading and writing configuration data. Retrieving configuration data, for example, only requires a single line of code. Additional methods and classes also exist to handle atypical configuration scenarios. While StorageProviders existed in the previous versions on the Configuration Application Block, some enhancements have been made to Enterprise Library's version that distinguishes it from its predecessor.
Lastly, if the needs of a particular enterprise application cannot be completely provided by the features that ship right out of the box, you can extend the Configuration Application Block by creating custom StorageProviders and Transformers. Both of these constructs are covered in detail later in this chapter. |