Seven components have been assembled for Microsoft’s Enterprise Library, to be made publicly available next January and founded on technology previously only available to customers using Avanade’s Connected Architecture for .NET (ACA.NET) 4.0.

Components combine best practices and a common architecture for data access, exception handling, application configuration, application caching, logging and instrumentation, security and cryptography.

Avanade, a joint systems integrator venture between Microsoft and consulting partner Accenture created in 2000, has used the components in 330 projects, to speed development and cut associated costs, by re-using common application assets.

Mortgage specialist Fidelity National Financials Empower! Division, an ADA.NET user, said services like ADA.NET are important because they help provide basic plumbing for application development, which is available across organizations on a re-usable basis.

Senior vice president and chief software architect David Spies told ComputerWire: Every time we can leverage code that’s been written there’s an advantage, by reducing the time and total cost in developing an application. Every enterprise-level application should have that plumbing, but it takes considerable time to develop the plumbing.

Matt Joe, Avanade solutions manager, said components in Microsoft’s existing component architecture had been developed as one-offs, and didn’t scale, while ADA.NET provided a common architecture for aspects like data access and security.

Joe added using ADA.NET, Enterprise Library would help developer up-take of .NET, because it provided a set of pre-documented components and best practices with integrated help via Microsoft’s development environment Visual Studio.NET.

Joe said Microsoft is struggling to achieve uptake for .NET. One reason is the architecture’s flexibility; with its support for multiple languages via the Common Language Runtime (CLR) meant there were 50 different ways of doing something, according to Joe.

ADA.NET components are written in C#, Microsoft’s newest programming language. Avanade is not releasing all ADA.NET components from its library of 12 to Microsoft, and is retaining components in service oriented architectures (SOAs) and aspect oriented programming (AOP) for use by its own, paying customers. Enterprise Library will be made available via the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).