Microsoft Patterns and Practices

Available at http://www.microsoft.com/practices (or http://www.microsoft.com/patterns) is a set of proven, authoritative , accurate, actionable recommendations for using the key components of the .NET platform. Created by the Perspective Architecture Group (PAG) within Microsoft, they contain a set of patterns and their .NET implementations , reference architectures of IT systems, reference building blocks, and life cycle practices. Patterns and Practices publishes information in the form of recommendation guides (which are really full-blown books) and reusable code blocks that can be used within an application to solve a specific business problem. For instance, the caching application block, a .NET class library that allows you to cache Web service data, helps in increasing the overall efficiency and scalability of a distributed application. Similarly, the data access application block contains optimized code that provides easy and efficient execution of SQL Server stored procedures and general SQL query execution. Application blocks are available as standard MSI (Microsoft Windows Installer) files and contain samples that utilize the application blocks for easy adoption. Currently application blocks are available for asynchronous invocation, application updates, caching, configuration management, data access, exception management, service aggregation, and so on.