Chapter 1. The Configuration Application Block Runtime


WHY START THIS book with a discussion of the Configuration Application Block? After all, there certainly must be more interesting topics than reading and writing configuration data for an application. True as that may be, the Configuration Application Block is the most important block in Enterprise Library. All other blocks depend on the Configuration Application Block to provide the functionality that drives their specific behavior. The application blocks that ship with Enterprise Library are no different than most applications and assemblies in this respect: they require some form of configuration information to operate properly. Understanding the design of the Configuration Application Block will help you grasp the concepts of the other application blocks. In short, the Configuration Application Block is the "glue" that combines the other application blocks into one "library."

This chapter describes how the Configuration Application Block has been designed to allow a loose coupling to exist between an enterprise application or application block and the data stores that contain its configuration data. It details how the Configuration Application Block manages the configuration data internally and includes detailed information on how specific features in the Configuration Application Block work. It discusses how configuration data must be structured for it to be read and written by the Configuration Application Block, and how StorageProviders and Transformers are used to achieve the design goal of decoupling an application from the form and storage location of its configuration data.

This chapter also describes how to create new StorageProviders and Transformers to extend the capabilities of the Configuration Application Block and looks at the classes that are used to manage configuration data and the role of each. The chapter concludes by showing how to take advantage of these classes to read and write configuration data for an application.




Fenster Effective Use of Microsoft Enterprise Library(c) Building Blocks for Creating Enterprise Applications and Services 2006
Effective Use of Microsoft Enterprise Library: Building Blocks for Creating Enterprise Applications and Services
ISBN: 0321334213
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 103
Authors: Len Fenster

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