Enterprise Library and WCF

If you're creating Web Services using WCF (or ASMX, for that matter) then you are, of course, using the Web Service Software Factory to create them (right?). Well one thing the WSSF does not include is the hooks to the various blocks within the Enterprise Library that many would find useful in tier freshly-generated Web Services; like Validation, Exception Handling and Logging, Performance Counters, Caching and Exception Shielding. These have to be manually added after you've generated your code.

Well recently a team from Avenade decided to fix this problem and have released to CodePlex an extension to the WSSF called the "EntLib Extensions To WSSF". Once installed (a matter of copying the dll's and updated configuration XML in the appropriate place) you get an additional option when choosing the implementation technology - "WCF with Entlib". Choosing this exposes a slew of new options within your Model that permits you to add all the logging, caching etc. hooks you like; you just need to use the EntLib Configuration tool on your finished Solution (just as you ordinarily would) in order to Make It Work, which is a lot simpler :-)