The Sikh Geek

At the recent Remix UK Conference, Scott Guthrie talked about ASP.NET MVC which is a framework that has been developed based on the Model-View-Controller Paradigm/Pattern. This is a web framework which separates out an online application into a number distinct roles which are as follows :

• Model - provides access to the data which is typically stored in a database
• View - provides the presentation layer which is the web pages that you will see and will provide the styling etc
• Controller - provides the handling of web requests and scheduling the access to the model and view parts

This pattern is not new but what is new is Microsoft’s implementation of this as the ASP.NET MVC. There are a number of advantages of using this approach which are :

• more control over the html generated
• separation into these roles allows a test driven approach i.e. you can test each aspect without having the other parts available
• basic plumbing such as authentication is built in

Whilst this might not be the right approach in all scenarios it gives a great new option which is free and for us gives us a framework where something like Sharepoint is not required. ASP.NET MVC is also supported by Microsoft in a production environment.