Of all of the ways that Microsoft offers you to write a web page, which one delivers the most value per programming hour?

Question

I'm frustrated recently by all of the choices that Microsoft offers to develop a web form. There is Sharepoint, Infopath without Sharepoint, ASP.NET Web Forms (with different controls for each runtime), ASP.NET without Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC framework, Silverlight, and WCF. Rendering and databinding technologies aside, there are a handful of different ways to pass data to and from the database (DataSets, LINQ, SqlDataControls, and many more) And those are only the ones that I can name in a minute or so - I'm sure I'm missing some very old technologies (did FoxPro ever get a web front end) or very new things in the process of rolling out of Microsoft Labs.

If I want to move away from using ASP.NET Web Forms and DataSets, what's the best way to move right now for data driven forms? What have you worked with that delivered good value for your programming time? I'm tempted to try working with LINQ to Entities and the new MVC framework, but I don't know enough about all these new technologies to choose where the value lies.

Answer 1

If you're using ASP.NET (which, when trying to code a regular website, feels a little "shoehorned"), then I thoroughly recommend trying Microsoft's MVC framework. It's a real breath of fresh air!

From a value per working-hour POV, it really depends on what you're doing. I can't say I've tried many web-frameworks, so I may not be the best metric, but using MVC everything fell into place naturally and I'm happy to stick with it for now.

Answer 2

I don't think ASP.Net Forms is something you need to "get away from".

MVC certainly has it's usefulness and when appropriate certainly makes a lot of stuff simpler.

But a well designed ASP.Net Forms app can be just as or even more useful in certain situations.

Myself I use MVC for public facing sites and Forms for internal/administrative stuff.

Answer 3

It's been said many times before - there is no "what's best". If any of these tools were best, than the rest wouldn't exist. "Data driven forms" is a pretty broad requirements statement.

They all have advantages and disadvantages in other areas, but all of them are capable of "data driven forms". MVC is lower-level forms - you will have to put in all the HTML and form processing yourself, however, it is much closer to dealing directly with HTTP, so lots of people find it much lighter-weight and easier to work with.

Silverlight has drawbacks in that it uses a diminished set of the .Net libraries, and requires the users to install browser plugins.

WCF would provide the data behind your forms, and would be very suitable if you're planning on opening up a public API or consuming the data in other ways.

You may find it beneficial to research each technology for even an hour each, and you would have a better understanding of which might fit your needs.

Answer 4

For a data-heavy page, I think web forms is a perfectly adequate solution. MVC introduces separation of layers which may make it harder for you to develop, since it forces you to separate the gathering of the data and routing it.

I'd say MVC is nice for having an interactive web page (Web 2.0-ish) but if you are simply showing a bunch of reports, or making users fill out forms - there's not much for you to take advantage of, IMHO.

As an alternative, try writing less code with built-in controls like Repeaters or DataGrids or even DataSets. Getting down to the core of your data flow allows you to be more productive by writing smarter code - not necessarily by writing less code.

In the end, I've found that I put together my own "framework" that does exactly what I need. I get HTML directly from a custom control. These controls simply format the data being fed by procedure calls to my custom Database access class. And yes, these are all served up with web forms or http handlers (ASHX) and a little bit of jQuery.

So while it's not glamourous, it gets the job done faster and better - by developing code that is fine-tuned to my business, not to some abstract software design pattern.