What benefits can I get upgrading my ASP.NET (Webform) + DAL(EF) + Repository + BLL structure to MVC?
- by Etienne
I'm in the process of defining an approach that may best fit our needs for a big web application development.
For now, I'm thinking going with an ASP.NET Architecture with a DAL using Entity Framework, a Repository concept to not access DAL directly from BLL and a BLL that call the repository and make every manipulations necessary to prepare data to push in a presentation layer (.aspx files).
I don't plan to use ASP.Net controls and prefer to keep things simple and lightweight using plain html, jQuery UI controls and do most of the server calls with jQuery Ajax. Sometimes, when needed, I plan to use handlers (.ashx) to call BLL methods that will return JSON or HTML to client for dynamic stuff.
My solution also has a test project that Mock the Repository with in-memory data to not repose on database for testing BLL methods...
It may be usefull to add that we will build a big application over this architecture with hundreds of tables and store procedures with a lot of reading and writing to database.
My question is, having this architecture in mind, Is there any evident advantages that I can obtain by using an MVC3 project instead of the described architecture base on Webform? Do you see any problem in this architecture that may cause us problem during the next steps of development?
I know the MVC pattern for using it in others projects with Django... but the Microsoft MVC implementation look so much more complex and verbose than Django MVC and it's why I'm hesitating (or waiting for a little push?) right now before jumping into it... We are in a real project with deadlines and don't want to slow the development process without any real benefits.
