ASP.net MVC 3: Doubts before start

[TalktoPriest]

Dear all,

I am new to Asp.net MVC, We want to do projects in MVC 3, before that we need to know the Plus & Minus of MVC Application.

Please clarify my doubts
Note:- My Company is small (less than 10 developers) and i have some questions for MVC Experts.

My Doubts:-
1) Is it suitable for small companies?
2) Previously we did all in Stored Procedures, all of our database queries are in stored procedures only, But in MVC in we don't need to write stored procedures especially when we are using NHibernate. And How is this good?
3) What is the minimum configuration to deploy a MVC Application (for client & web server) ?
4) Is bug fixing will taking too much time to solve?
5) Is learning MVC is easy for new developers (if new employees added to my concern)
6) Is MVC has any big disadvantages?
7) I read that MVC 3 with NHibernate (ORM) we will do database independent Application. (only table design of oracle, sql server & MySQL is enough), is that true?
8) What is the Main advantage of MVC Architecture?

Thanks in advance

[gep13]

Hello,

Welcome to the forums!!

I certainly wouldn't count myself as an ASP.NET MVC expert, but here are my thoughts anyway...

1. Sure. I can't think of any thing that would prevent it being used by a small company.
2. The fact that you are using MVC has no bearing on whether you are using Stored Procedures or not. Depending on the type of pattern you are using, your Model can be implemented in multiple ways. i.e you could use ADO.Net and the existing stored procedures. Or you could use Entity Framework, or use NHibernate, etc. If you already have a lot of logic in stored procedures, you may want to think about reusing them.
3. Are you talking about IIS? If so, all you need is the corresponding version of ASP.NET installed. The MVC DLL's can be "bin" deployed, so you don't need anything additional installed/configured on the server. Nothing special needed on the client.
4. That is really an impossible question to answer. What I will say is, if you do MVC application as recommended, and you have a suite of Tests to verify the functionality of your application, then in theory bugs can be tested and verified quicker.
5. Again, not an easy question to answer. It really depends on the person. There are a wealth of resources out there though, so there really is not reason that a new developer can't get up to speed quickly.
6. This is really a subjective question, and depending on who you talk to, you will get different answers. A lot of purists say that the ASP.NET implementation is "wrong" and that is where things like FubuMVC have sprung from. I would suggest that you have a play with ASP.NET MVC and see for yourself what you think of it. Anything else is just going to be another persons bias. I for one think it is reasonably good at what it does, and I can't think of a reason to not use it.
7. I can't say that I have actually used NHibernate, so can't comment on that one.
8. I think most people would agree that the logical separation of "concerns" is one of it's biggest advantages.

Hope that helps!

Gary

[szlamany]

You and your 10 developers will have more fun doing straight jQuery with your own web methods or services or whatever for source of data.

Do you really want to be behind a heavy framework?

What is the benefit of the model, view and controller experience that you seek?

I am curious...

[gep13]

Do you really want to be behind a heavy framework?

Can you define heavy?

I wouldn't have said that ASP.NET MVC was particularly bloated?!?

Gary

[szlamany]

I always seem to find that having things like layers of controllers just hide my CRUD (or whatever) and in the long run I really want to be in charge of that stuff.

In the end - imo - that is the easiest stuff to develop.

Also it benefits most from being customized to your particular web experience...

I don't do any real mvc myself - just opinions from what I've seen on forums and such. I could be all washed up!

You can google for

asp.net mvc drawbacks

to see opinions from others - although some are old (2009 and such) - so might not apply.

[TalktoPriest]

Dear All,

Thanks for your reply.

It helps me lot. It will give me a clear picture about ASP.net MVC Application.

[gep13]

Hello,

So, what is your decision?

Are you going to give it a try?

Gary

[TalktoPriest]

Dear Gary,

Thanks for your reply.

We Postpone the decision by 2 weeks. Need more analysis & learning to make the correct decision.

Suggest me a good combination for ASP.net MVC. (ORM Tools, MVC Version, etc..)

[gep13]

Hey,

ASP.NET MVC 3 is the current stable release, but there is a beta of ASP.NET MVC 4 that has a number of new features. I don't know when this is due to get released, but definitely worth checking out.

As for the ORM, again, a very subjective question. There are various options...

Entity Framework
Simple.Data
NHibernate
Subsonice
Telerik's offering
DevExpress offering

Each one has their pro and cons, and really only you can decide which one will work for you or not. I am sorry that this doesn't answer your question, but it is really too subjective, anything would just be my opinion.

Gary

[TalktoPriest]

Dear Gray,

Thanks for your reply, i will verify the same.

[Bill Crawley]

I have used MVC3 with the Entity Framework on a large application.

You can still use your Stored Procs from within the Entity Framework if you so choose, but you dont have to. You can use the Object context of the Entity Framework.

MVC is good for helping you maintain 'separation of concern'. It's important that you use MVC the right way. e.g. keep your controllers small and ensure they are used purely to control. Many companies/people find it tempting to place business code in the controllers, this is not what they are about. Check out Scott Gutherie's blog (MVC GURU).

[FunkyDexter]

I've dabbled but not much more. My initial findings were:-
I liked the separation of concerns but I fell that's quite easy to achieve by applying a bit of discipline when using "conventional" code so I'm not sure how big a win that was for me. That said, if I had a team of developers on it I could see that it might help maintain good practices among some of the loose cannons
What I didn't like was the lack of a Visual Designer. I really come from a WinForms background so maybe this wouldn't be such a culture shear for more webby folks but for me it made things quite awkward when trying to design my screens.

I'm with Szlamany in that I like being in touch with the sql statements - again, I think this comes from the fact that my background has been very sql orientated, folks who are less sql orientated might love it - and I didn't like that all the tutorials seemed to be geared towards using auto generated Entity Framework code but I found I was able to start replacing that stuff with my own sql code before I moved onto other projects. I didn't take that very far though and might have run into problems if I'd been doing more than just mucking about.

[Bill Crawley]

To add a little flesh to Entity Framework (i'm talking 4.0 and up), when you first open the designer, you make a connection to the database that you want to use. Now let's say you have written a load of SP's to perform the CRUD operations, from the designer you have a choice of including, Tables, Views and Stored Procs, you can select any combination. If you select SP's you then get the option of including or excluding SP's since if you have some SP's that are called purely from higher level SP and they never get called in their own right, then you wouldn't want to include those in the Entity Framework. Once you have selected your SP's you then map them against the objects that you want them used with.

I've found they work really well.

[gep13]

I'm with Szlamany in that I like being in touch with the sql statements - again, I think this comes from the fact that my background has been very sql orientated, folks who are less sql orientated might love it - and I didn't like that all the tutorials seemed to be geared towards using auto generated Entity Framework code but I found I was able to start replacing that stuff with my own sql code before I moved onto other projects. I didn't take that very far though and might have run into problems if I'd been doing more than just mucking about.

Just to be clear though...

Using ASP.NET MVC does not mandate that you have to use an ORM like Entity Framework. You can still be as close as you like to the SQL Server instance using ASP.NET MVC.

Gary