The Ambient Context Design Pattern in .NET

Ambient Context is a common pattern used throughout the .NET framework. They’re a powerful mechanism to keep useful data around, to define scopes and to provide cross-cutting capabilities. They provide functionality and a non-intrusive management mechanism without having to clutter the components that need them with additional parameters or static variables. I haven’t seen this pattern documented in any detail elsewhere, I thought I might make a first attempt to describe it in pattern language terms.