I'm pleased to announce that S#arp Architecture 0.9 has been released at http://code.google.com/p/sharp-architecture/downloads/list.  Along with completely updated documentation (in /docs) and migration guidance (in /VersionHistory.txt), this release has a number of improvements to the SharpArch libraries including, among others:

• Update of dependencies such as ASP.NET MVC Beta;
• Inclusion of NHibernate.Validator and Fluent NHibernate (no more HBMs...although they're still supported if you love getting your hands dirty in XML);
• A final resolution to Equals and GetHashCode; they're now completely independent from one another;
• Interfaces for DomainObject (was "DomainSignatureComparable") and PersistentObject for rolling your own versions if you'd prefer;
• A greatly simplified Repository interface and with a small addition of GetByProperties (and now being called "Repository" instead of "DAO" to be more inline with DDD nomenclature); the more advanced NHibernate-centric Repository interface is still available for use if needed;
• Support for NHibernate configuration settings being elsewhere than web.config; and
• An extracted DbContext, accessible from any Repository, to access methods such as CommitChanges and RollbackTransaction.

The Northwind sample project code has also been developed further to include:

• Plenty of examples of using Fluent NHibernate in various situations such as one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many;
• Inclusion of NHibernate.Validator as the preferred mechanism for performing validation with S#arp Architecture (although other mechanisms may be used); and
• A full CRUD life cycle example (trivial as it may be) for managing basic employee information.

While feedback is always welcome and encouraged, I particularly hope to receive a lot of critiques, suggestions, and ideas for improvement of the employee CRUD example as this will serve as the basis for templates and scaffolding generators.

To give you an idea of what stands between 0.9 and 1.0:

• Add WCF integration
• Add example of using a Unit of Work to encapsulate non-trivial controller logic
• Add support for the Common Service Locator
• Hone CRUD capabilities
• Scaffolding generators!  I intend to include scaffolding generators for various presentation options such as ASPX, Ext JS and NVelocity.

A big thanks goes out to Frank Laub, Simone Busoli, Luis Abreu, Kyle Baley, and Roy Bradley for the terrific insight, suggestions and all around assistance for this release.  Feel free to join in on the discussions at http://groups.google.com/group/sharp-architecture.

Enjoy!

Billy McCafferty