PRISM 4 Is Now Code Complete

The patterns&practices team at Microsoft has released the latest version of its composite application guidance called PRISM 4 Drop 9, the library, the reference implementations and quick starts being code complete.

PRISM (PResentation Integration SysteM), formerly known as Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight is a Microsoft patterns&practices project providing guidance for architects and developers to write complex front-end WPF and Silverlight applications, containing a reusable library, reference implementations, quick starts, labs, and documentation.

PRISM is built around a number of patterns:

• Composite User Interface patterns:
  • Composite and Composite View
  • Command
  • Adapter
• Modularity patterns:
  • Separated Interface and Plug In
  • Service Locator
  • Event Aggregator
  • Façade
• Testability patterns:
  • Inversion of Control
  • Separated Presentation

Microsoft released two major versions this year: PRISM 2.2 supporting Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4, and PRISM 4 CTP including among other features a Model-View-ViewModel Reference Implementation (MVVM RI), a Stock Trader Reference Implementation (Stock Trader RI), a MVVM Quick Start, and API documentation. There is no version #3 for PRISM, probably to be in line with .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4, etc..

The latest update, PRISM 4 Drop 9, comes with a number of changes, such as:

• The Prism License has changed to the Microsoft patterns & practices license. Please see http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/license for details. It is also included in EULA.txt in the root Prism folder.
• The Prism Library 4.0 code base, reference implementations, and QuickStarts are now code complete.
• Consolidated and simplified the ViewInjection and ViewDiscovery QuickStarts into a single QuickStart called UIComposition QuickStart.
• Bug fixes
• Finished converting the StockTraderRI to MEF and update for consistency with MVVM guidance.

PRISM is planned to support Windows Phone 7 development, but currently nothing is available yet.

The latest version of PRISM requires VS 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, and Silverlight 4.