Enterprise Library popularly known as EntLib is a collection of Application Blocks targeted at managing oft needed redundant tasks in enterprise development, like Logging, Caching, Validation, Cryptography etc.

Entlib currently exposes 9 application blocks:

• Caching Application Block
• Cryptography Application Block
• Data Access Application Block
• Exception Handling Application Block
• Logging Application Block
• Policy Injection Application Block
• Security Application Block
• Validation Application Block
• Unity Dependency Injection and Interception Mechanism

Ever since the Honeymoon period of PoCs and tryouts is over and Azure started to mainstream and more precisely started to go “Enterprise”, Azure developers have been demanding EntLib for Azure.

The demands seems to have finally been heard and the powers that be have bestowed us with the current beta release EntLib 5.0 which supports Windows Azure.

The application blocks tailored for Azure are:

• Data Access Application Block (Think SQL Azure)
• Exception Handling Application Block (Windows Azure Diagnostics)
• Logging Application Block (Windows Azure Diagnostics)
• Validation Application Block
• Unity Dependency Injection Mechanism

The EntLib 5.0 beta is now available for download.