The Patterns and Practices Guidance Explorer gives developers the ability to quickly find guidance on a variety of topics. Documents in the Patterns and Practices Library are currently divided into categories such as Checklists, Code Examples, Guidelines, Principals, and Test Cases.
The Guidance Explorer supports complex filtering, allowing users to quickly narrow down the range of topics. Default views include ADO.Net, ASP.Net, Security, and Performance.
The web version of the Guidance Explorer offers a read-only view of the Library. The rich client version has additional features that teams will find helpful. Of particular note is the ability to create and share a custom view of the library that only shows guidelines of interest to the team. The rich client version also allows developers to create and publish their own guidelines.
The Online Guidance Store is a SQL Server-backed web service that acts a custom Library for the Guidance Explorer. Rich Clients are automatically kept in sync with the library.
Finally there is the Guidance Explorer Authoring Toolkit, which allows developers to create their own branded version of the Guidance Explorer.
While this tool is targeted at developers, it is conceivable that it can be leveraged for other aspects of a business. For example, one could use it to store the company HR polices or Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance documents. Firms with a lot of regulation such as brokerage houses may also find it useful. This is an open source project on CodePlex, so full customization is possible.
