Enterprise Library 4.1 devs should DIAF | The Coffeehouse

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

We updated from 3.1 to 4.1. Everything compiles. Everything seems to work, until we try to handle a custom exception.

Here's the exception message that EntLib gives us: {"Unable to handle exception: 'LoggingExceptionHandler'."}

There is no nested exception. There is no documentation that the function call could possibly throw that exception. Nothing. Nada.

So, instead, we go through the hassle of attempting to get the debug version built and then try to figure out how or why we can't get that to hook up with some of our assemblies, only to find out that the frikking idiots who wrote the library purposefully eat the exception.

See, here in the real world, when clients tend to get annoyed at paying lots of money for no actual results, an error message like this: {"The configured exception formatter 'xxxx.Common.Instrumentation.CommonExceptionTextFormatter, FLLegislature.Common, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' must expose a public constructor that takes a TextWriter object, an Exception object and a GUID instance as parameters."}

Would have been really frikking handy last night.

I applaud the effort behind EntLib, but to be honest, every time I have to code against it, I'm left with the desire to just roll my own.

JoshRoss
A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

> I applaud the effort behind EntLib, but to be honest, every time I have to code against it, I'm left with the desire to just roll my own.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Rube Goldberg, if still alive today, would be proud of the EntLib team's accomplishments.

joechung

Test your custom exception formatters before deploying.

Dan

I contacted the P&P team to respond to this thread, but frankly, they said it's not worth it as this is a flame and hoping the team members "die in a fire" basically killed any chance you have of actually getting a response.

Something to consider - Do you want to be hateful and just get it off your chest or do you want your problem understood/solved?

JoshRoss
A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

In reply to Dan

#Jun 30th @ 9:54 AM

The biggest problem the p&p team has is the enterprise mindset. A place where you have small problems, unlimited resources and high barriers of entry for your competition.

If the BCL team had the same attitude towards criticism, Microsoft would find itself in Sun Microsystems place, having become a breading ground of mediocracy with it's best days behind it.

Sure this thread is a flame, but two wrongs don't make a right. To scanIam, I suggest that you look for lighter frameworks to solve your problem. Perhaps it can be solved with better usage of the well tested, well documented BCL.

I cannot think of too many projects that an individual programmer might set to complete, that need to utilize the constructs present in the entLib.

In the words of David Hill, Architect, from his P&P blog, "...it’s fair to say that some of our guidance has been on the, errrm, complicated side. We do focus on building real-world applications on a solid architectural footing, so some complexity is inevitable but still, we think there is a lot we can do simplify our guidance and improve the way in which we build, package and deliver it."

Respectively yours, fire and death aside,

Josh