Working with Code Libraries

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Code libraries allow you to reuse code and save you a large amount of time and money. This article, the first in a multi-part series, discusses the NxBRE library; future articles will cover other libraries. This article is excerpted from chapter four of Windows Developer Power Tools, written by James Avery and Jim Holmes (O'Reilly, 2006; ISBN: 0596527543). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

4.0  Introduction

Code reuse is a critical part of good software development. Why spend time and money designing, building, and testing a library if someone’s already done the heavy lifting for you? The story told way too often in software development circles is of the team that decided to “implement their own X,” where X could be a logging framework, a custom Flash graphing engine, a compression formula, and so on. The team always ends up spending way more time working on their custom creation than actually adding value to the business they are working with, and usually the project gets cancelled or goes way over budget. Don’t make the same mistake; always use an existing library whenever possible!

The Tools

For abstracting business rules into XML 
   NxBRE 
   Gives you the ability to pull your business rules out of
   your code and keep them stored in XML or Visio
   documents.

For adding quality logging to your application    
   log4net 
   Lets you create logfiles for your application with
   varying levels of detail. The people responsible for
   maintaining your application will thank you.

For implementing search functionality 
   Lucene.Net 
   Gives your users enhanced search functionality.

For comparing libraries 
   LibCheck 
   Compares two versions of an assembly to see what
   has changed. This can be very useful when you’re
   trying to diagnose why something is broken or is
   causing unexpected behavior.

For visually comparing assemblies 
   Reflector.Diff 
   Lets you visually compare the differences between
   assemblies.

For adding spellchecking capabilities to your application 
   NetSpell 
   Gives your users the ability to check their spelling
   while using your application.

For adding chart capabilities 
   NPlot 
   Lets you add charts and graphs to your application.

For sorting collections 
   NSort 
   Gives you the functionality to sort your collections in a
   number of different ways.

For adding RSS to your application 
   RSS.NET 
   Enables you to add RSS feeds to your site (and read
   from current RSS feeds) without writing a line of XML.

For adding compression to your application 
   SharpZipLib 
   Easily compresses files or information using any
   number of compression algorithms.

For writing XML documents 
   ExcelXMLWriter 
   Lets you easily export Excel spreadsheets from your
   application.

For creating PDFs 
   iTextSharp 
   Gives your users the ability to export PDFs from your
   application.

Next: 4.1 Externalizing Business Rules with NxBRE >>
 

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