Total newbie, trying to get a feeling of what's out there, so please treat gently

I'm learning The Beer House (TBH) solution. Re infrastructure, it provides a DAL that sits between the relational DB and business objects.

Then, there's EntLib which AFAIK, does pretty much the same.

Am I right? If so, does it make sense to study and follow TBH? If those two solve the same issue, and EntLib has massive support behind it, should I switch my learning efforts to EntLib?

Avraham,

To be honest, i've never used EntLib but have looked at it, so know a little about it. As far as i know, EntLib returns typed datasets, rather than having a BLL with the ActiveRecord pattern. Based on this assumption, the key strength of TBH is the fact that you can model your domain (BLL) in a heirarchical fashion with all related parent and child objects. you can also lazy load entire entities and/or individual properties when you have complete control of your domain model.

Also, as TBH uses the provider model, your datastore can be anything from a database to an XML file to a spreadsheet, etc, etc. All that you require to do is 'write' a provider for this in the DAL namespace and your BLL layer will function against that with no changes required. In EntLib (from what i've read) it's limited to SQLServer/Oracle databases etc...

Obviously, an indepth study would reveal further differences and one approach may suit you more than the other. However, in my opinion, as TBH is a totally patterns and practices based model it shouldn't be too difficult to move from one model to another, just more an issue of deciding what fits your requirement up front. If typed datasets is your bag, then EntLib would be a no-brainer. If however, you need the further flexibility to express your domain more richly, then i think you'd have to consider TBH (or nHibernate etc).

just my thoughts based on very 'slim' knowledge of EntLib.

jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

Hi Jimi, and thank you for responding,

I'm really really talking from ignorance here, but I was thinking about the Web Service Software Factory, and especially the Modeling Edition.

My feeling is that in addition to reducing the object relational match, it also provides you with deployment freedom (i.e. you can spread you application across servers) through the use of WCF services.

Anyhow, I'm hugely enjoying the book, and even if I chose the alternative architecture, it's a great learning experience!


Avi