Eventually what I have concluded about the MEF vs IoC container is as follows: MEF is preferred to be used when one has to deal with unknown types or a plugin based architecture. IoC containers are preferred to be used with known types. Moreover, MEF is an architectural solution for dependency injection Whereas, IoC containers … Read more
I suggest declaring that with the StructureMap configuration. Using the slightly newer StructureMap code: For<IProductProvider>().Use<ProductProvider> .Ctor<string>(“connectionString”).Is(someValueAtRunTime); This way you don’t burden your client code from having to know the value and can keep your IoC configuration separate from your main code.
See here and here for a pretty thorough technical comparison of several IoC containers, although somewhat outdated by now (they’re from before Windsor 2.0) However, I don’t think there are really any vital features that Windsor offers and other containers don’t. Windsor, StructureMap, Spring.NET have all been around for several years and have been used … Read more