SA Developer .NET

Hi,

We are considering using ASP.NET MVC for a project here at Nedbank. I was wondering whether anyone has used/played with this, and what their experiences were.

At the moment my 2 biggest concerns are:

1. Losing the richness of Web Forms. It looks like there's a lot of manual dev-ing of MVC Views, and I'm completely in the dark as to how it handles Ajax, and ViewState (if at all).

2. Developer approval: I have actually noticed over the years that developers can actually resist new ways and technologies themselves, and on the ASP platform MVC is a completely new way of developing web apps. My concern is that it is such a dramatic new way, and the learning curve so big, that the developers become completely demotivated to use it.

Also, since one of the cornerstones of MVC is the ability to test the UI, do you think that it will be beneficial in an organization with a mild test driven culture?

If someone could shed some light on these concerns, or share any of their experiences with ASP MVC I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Jacques

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OpenLandscape.wordpress.com

I introduced ASP.Net MVC to our development team recently as an alternative to us re-inventing the wheel for a campaign driven web site but we ended up not going that root mainly because of the learning curve involved in getting to learn this model.

The MVC framework from my understanding was mainly developed in seperating the current views from the controllers that underly them, but regardless of what framework you end up using, some custom development to fit your needs will always persist.

I'm not to sure about the ViewState or Ajax but I stumbled upon these links a while ago that might point you towards the answer you seek

http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=070173 - without ViewState
http://www.nikhilk.net/Ajax-MVC.aspx - with AJAX support

From a developer point of view we currently have no projects in line that will make use of this framework thus we will not pursue the MVC framework. Again, it depends on the project, will your project benefit from the new routing mechanism for example {table}/{column}/list.aspx instead of myapp.com/items.aspx?tbl=product&id=2? Will you have the resources after the project has been launched to maintain it and and and.

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'Not everything is binary, if you look closer you might find some hexadecimal in there somewhere'

EricTruter:

Thanks for the links!

I'm not to sure about the ViewState or Ajax but I stumbled upon these links a while ago that might point you towards the answer you seek

http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=070173 - without ViewState
http://www.nikhilk.net/Ajax-MVC.aspx - with AJAX support

From a developer point of view we currently have no projects in line that will make use of this framework thus we will not pursue the MVC framework. Again, it depends on the project, will your project benefit from the new routing mechanism for example {table}/{column}/list.aspx instead of myapp.com/items.aspx?tbl=product&id=2? Will you have the resources after the project has been launched to maintain it and and and.

 I have confirmed that with ASP.NET MVC you cannot use any server controls, but you can use it with Ajax. There are 2 motivations for considering ASP MVC:

1. It enforces a clear separation of concerns, and ensures a consistent way to implement user interfaces.
   
   
2. You can test your UIs.

At this stage it looks like we will go with Spring.NET MVC. It provides a smoother uprgade path, by implementing a Presentation Model pattern (which is a flavor of MVC) on existing Web Froms infrastructure. You achieve basically the same separation of concerns as with ASP.NET MVC, but you can leverage the familiarity of, and experience invested in Web Forms. However it doesn't enforce the MVC pattern like ASP.NET MVC, so a junior developer can still come around and override Spring.NET MVC by using the default Page databing and events. You also lose the testability of the UI, since you need a ASP context and a web page to run the UI code.

Has anyone here used Spring.NET MVC?

 

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OpenLandscape.wordpress.com

Hi,

Did you guys decide to go ahead with MVC?

 

mugombi:

Did you guys decide to go ahead with MVC?

Yes. We went with MVC +jQuery, and it has exceeded our expectations in every way.

With MVC you can use server controls, and bind to them for display. But you can't do bi-directional binding, without breaking the MVC pattern.

Also MVC by itself, without jQuery, is a bit dull (from a UI perspective). But throw jQuery into the mix, and you have an awesome, rich, and very responsive UI platform.

 

The system will go live at the bank next week, and everyone has been hugely impressed. Let me know if you have any specific questions...

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OpenLandscape.wordpress.com