Today I decided to make a small ASP.NET MVC application which would add, edit, delete, and list US states which resided in a SQL Server Express database.  I am a veteran in ASP.NET Web Forms development, so I wanted to see what MVC is like.  I create business objects/models everyday, so understanding models was easy enough.  The tricky part for me was creating and understanding how controllers and views interact with each other.

In Part1, I discussed the basics of what the MVC pattern is and how Microsoft has incorporated MVC into ASP.NET.  In this segment, I am going to discuss some general advantages of ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC.  Neither flavor of ASP.NET will be the superior choice in all circumstances.  Therefore knowing the advantages to each will help.

Traditionally there has been only one approach to develop ASP.NET web applications; web forms.  Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of hype wrapped around this thing called MVC and the fact that it can be used as an approach to develop ASP.NET applications.  What is MVC?  MVC stands for Model-View-Controller.  It is a design pattern which separates an application into 3 logical tiers: domain, input, and presentation.  This isolation between layers yields independent development, testing, and maintenance of each.