Where do we go from here?

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Oct 09

Where do we go from here?

Tuesday, October 09, 2007 10:21 AM

I'm at a crossroads. I had being in this spot. You're at the tail end of a technology experiment that didn't pan out (WebForms) and on the verge of a new 'breakthrough' of a technology that has much more promise (MVC a la ASP.NET).

I have a project that is in desperate need of refactoring because a lot of logic is stuck in code-behinds and I want to get it out of there into where it belongs. I was going to go a pseudo-MVP route with it, but it's looking like MVP on WebForms isn't the greatest solution. In fact, it isn't really a solution because there are some serious deficiencies.

So I hate to go refactor and do a bunch of MVP stuff I know is wrong in this circumstance, but I can't wait months for MVC.

Having witnessed ScottGu's MVC framework presentation myself, and with all the buzz I'm thinking that it's worth waiting for some of the MVC bits.

From what I saw in Scott's demo, it was pretty lightweight. There didn't seem to be much there (and that's the beauty of it!) and so even the early bits might be useful to start developing against.

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# re: Where do we go from here?

I'm at the same spot. All my business logic has been encapsulated to a single DLL and all that remains is the web UI. I have a good start on that in WebForms but the app is screaming for a Rails/RESTful interface. I'm also tempted to see how quickly the MVC bits are released before committing to the WebForms solution. 10/9/2007 10:18 PM | Mike Moore

# re: Where do we go from here?

Today at work I was tasked with taking a 'legacy' app (that was finished just a few weeks ago, and it's already 'legacy') and take it and refactor it and update it to support some new, major functionality. I'm thinking about making a case study of this and adapting it in preparation for MVC as much as possible. That sounds like a multi-parter... woohoo! 10/9/2007 10:22 PM | Chad Myers

# re: Where do we go from here?

I wonder... seeing as one goal of the new mvc.net framework is to allow hooking in alternative view engines (read Brail, NVelocity, and the like from MonoRail), would it make sense to start off by making a move to MonoRail and then come back to mvc.net later - when the bits are more fleshed out.

I've not seen the mvc.net bits yet, so I can't made a direct comparison between the two frameworks, but perhaps someone else with more MonoRail experience and some familiarity with mvc.net can. Then again, I do have a few guys on the inside (read: w/blue badges) that I could probably hit to get their thoughts/opinions.

At any rate, it's good to see this already taking a hold within the community. 10/10/2007 9:13 AM | Steven Harman

# re: Where do we go from here?

I'm not as familiar with MonoRail, but my understanding is that you are in for a penny, in for a pound and you have to do ActiveRecord and such. Well, you don't HAVE to, but it's geared towards that, right?

Anyhow, the post I was suggesting would be more focused around getting logic out of the ASPX, getting logic out of the code-behind, moving data access into its own layer, etc. Stuff that maybe you and I take for granted, but some of the people who may not use NHibernate or any form of Domain Model, etc might not know about or have done.

I was planning on walking through moving data access out of the pages and into their own layer and moving logic into the model, etc. and not even really talking about 'controllers' or anything yet. 10/10/2007 9:18 AM | Chad Myers

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