Help Choosing between Classic ASP.NET and MVC for Umbraco
Hi Guys,
I hope there is someone out there, with an opinion and experience in this area.
We are developing a web application that has to live within the CMS, utilizing the CMS features. We will be overriding the user/profile/security, etc. and the end-user must be able to take our Controls/pages and plug them into the CMS pages seamlessly.
Our developers are "in love" with the methodologies of MVC2, but when I look at umbraco, it doesn't seem very easy to merge an MVC-based web application into umbraco - compared to creating a classic ASP.NET application with user controls, and plug them in to Umbraco as "ASCX" macros.
So I guess my questions are:
What is your experience. Have any of you umbraco wizards had any exprience with MVC/Umbraco?
What was your approach in terms of things you had to change in the core Umbraco engine to make MVC work for you?
What is the do's / dont's when it comes to MVC in Umbraco, and the concerns with new deployment and upgrade, when new umbraco versions is released?
Umbraco 5 is MVC based. I do not know how stable or ready it is.
Not that I want to steer you away from Umbraco cuz I think it is really cool. But OrchardCMS is MVC 3 based. http://orchard.codeplex.com/
Kooboo was an interesting MVC 2 CMS,(looks like it has been updated a lot. MVC3 now.) I was looking at before I decided on Umbraco. http://kooboo.codeplex.com/
Do you mean V5? We don't have release dates for RTM, it'll be done when it's done ;)
As I've said in other threads I don't see a lot of advantage of using MVC in Umbraco 4.x, the only real reason I can see is if you're building a stand along application that resides under an Umbraco instance. The amount of work to pass data from the Umbraco APIs and then display them in an MVC application is most likely going to be more than its worth.
I am curios to know what are the decisional stuff for you behing MVC and not form based? Reason for me behing this is that i know MVC and I know form based asp.net; i did eveluate in choosing the MVC or Pure Asp.Net ( we choose MVC as it is not umbraco project with 25% extra cost of learning curve.) but when it comes to Umbraco you can go for Form based Asp.net.
Still if you can share your views for decision making about MVC i am glad to help more.
Hi Jigar and all others that have replied to my question
To answer your question first jigar:
The reason for making this decision is based on, that we are, in fact, going to create a "stand-alone" solution. Our solution will replace the standard User/Role/Profile mecanism with our own providers, and we want our customer to be able to leverage the functionality in umbraco (locking pages based on roles, easily plugging in components on pages, etc...).
I am not an MVC expert myself, just the humble software architect designing the solution. But from what I hear from our developers, MVC is a more "clean" architecture, they can do the work twice as fast, etc. etc... And I know the umbraco core team has fallen in love with this architecture themselves.
I have finally come to a decision, parts by reading you guys very good suggestions and article links. We will proceed with the project as an MVC solution. If it is too cumbersome to integrate it with V4, we will re-create the design in our solution and launch it in it's own website side-by-side with umbraco.
When Umbraco V5 is released, we will then consider integrating it with the CMS itself. Since Umbraco is open source and they don't seem to be bound by stuff like release date and deadlines, like the rest of us commercial ISV's, we will just have to wait until - like Slace mentions - it is done :)
Thanks again guys for your help, it is much appreciated.
Help Choosing between Classic ASP.NET and MVC for Umbraco
Hi Guys,
I hope there is someone out there, with an opinion and experience in this area.
We are developing a web application that has to live within the CMS, utilizing the CMS features. We will be overriding the user/profile/security, etc. and the end-user must be able to take our Controls/pages and plug them into the CMS pages seamlessly.
Our developers are "in love" with the methodologies of MVC2, but when I look at umbraco, it doesn't seem very easy to merge an MVC-based web application into umbraco - compared to creating a classic ASP.NET application with user controls, and plug them in to Umbraco as "ASCX" macros.
So I guess my questions are:
What is your experience. Have any of you umbraco wizards had any exprience with MVC/Umbraco?
What was your approach in terms of things you had to change in the core Umbraco engine to make MVC work for you?
What is the do's / dont's when it comes to MVC in Umbraco, and the concerns with new deployment and upgrade, when new umbraco versions is released?
Umbraco 5 is MVC based. I do not know how stable or ready it is.
Not that I want to steer you away from Umbraco cuz I think it is really cool. But OrchardCMS is MVC 3 based. http://orchard.codeplex.com/
Kooboo was an interesting MVC 2 CMS,(looks like it has been updated a lot. MVC3 now.) I was looking at before I decided on Umbraco. http://kooboo.codeplex.com/
And there was N2 http://n2cms.codeplex.com/
Well at moment the lovers of MVC2 needs to accept UMBRACO as wife :)
What i meant is that MVC based umrbaco is still not stable and till it is not stable if you wan to use umbraco start with Form based Asp.Net.
Regards,
Jigar
Great input guys and exactly what I was looking for.
We always have the option to actually complete the project in MVC and then plug it in to Umbraco when V5 is ready.
I think I will take a look at your other links as well Nick, even if we actually do like our wife very much... MVC or not :)
Does any of you, have any insights, as to when the core team is expecting to build the RTM release of version?
Regards,
Michael
Hmm just seraching for MVC on this site yeilded this
http://our.umbraco.org/forum/ourumb-dev-forum/features/14494-Is-there-any-plans-for-Umbraco-MVC
A disclaimer for me...I was a webforms guy then went to Windows dev...MVC is new to me, but looks awesome.
Do you mean V5? We don't have release dates for RTM, it'll be done when it's done ;)
As I've said in other threads I don't see a lot of advantage of using MVC in Umbraco 4.x, the only real reason I can see is if you're building a stand along application that resides under an Umbraco instance. The amount of work to pass data from the Umbraco APIs and then display them in an MVC application is most likely going to be more than its worth.
Hi Michel,
Hope you are doing fine.
I am curios to know what are the decisional stuff for you behing MVC and not form based? Reason for me behing this is that i know MVC and I know form based asp.net; i did eveluate in choosing the MVC or Pure Asp.Net ( we choose MVC as it is not umbraco project with 25% extra cost of learning curve.) but when it comes to Umbraco you can go for Form based Asp.net.
Still if you can share your views for decision making about MVC i am glad to help more.
Regards,
[email protected]
Hi Jigar and all others that have replied to my question
To answer your question first jigar:
The reason for making this decision is based on, that we are, in fact, going to create a "stand-alone" solution. Our solution will replace the standard User/Role/Profile mecanism with our own providers, and we want our customer to be able to leverage the functionality in umbraco (locking pages based on roles, easily plugging in components on pages, etc...).
I am not an MVC expert myself, just the humble software architect designing the solution. But from what I hear from our developers, MVC is a more "clean" architecture, they can do the work twice as fast, etc. etc... And I know the umbraco core team has fallen in love with this architecture themselves.
I have finally come to a decision, parts by reading you guys very good suggestions and article links. We will proceed with the project as an MVC solution. If it is too cumbersome to integrate it with V4, we will re-create the design in our solution and launch it in it's own website side-by-side with umbraco.
When Umbraco V5 is released, we will then consider integrating it with the CMS itself. Since Umbraco is open source and they don't seem to be bound by stuff like release date and deadlines, like the rest of us commercial ISV's, we will just have to wait until - like Slace mentions - it is done :)
Thanks again guys for your help, it is much appreciated.
Michael randrup
[email protected]
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