I'm not sure if this question is non-sense or not, please tell me if so. I am wondering do I create my models like one per each table in my database, or do you do one per controller? Is there something I am missing here?
From what I read the Model is suppose to be a representation of the real business objects, so would I just want to make it one big model or divide them out based on things in the app? based on real user/client perception of the data?
Thanks for your advice.
There's nothing wrong with controllers sharing models. But trying to serve every controller with the same model doesn't make sense.
Models and controllers really are't related, nor should they be. Models also aren't directly related to how data is stored in your application.
Models encapsulate data. Their design should be dictated by the data they are encapsulating. The demands of the system dictate what models you'll need and what data they must hold.
Don't try to overthink it. For a given request, determine what you need to show in your view and how it will be displayed. Determine what an appropriate model would look like for this scenario. If one already exists, use it. If not, create a new model. Save the overengineering later when you know what your needs are and can find commonalities between models.
Models can also contain other models, that's fine. Think of a model for a sales report. You would have a model for the report which would contain not only a report name, a total, but also a collection of other models which make up the report's line items.
It depends on what you mean by "Model". If by model you mean the business rule layer of your application, then there is no relationship in terms of numbers. One model of that type is used for any amount of views you need to build.
Personally, however, I would not bind any view to any model, but create an intermediary layer called a ViewModel that essentially taylors the data from your model to fit a particular view. In that case, the relationship is one-to-one. This is essentially how Presenter patterns work. Every view is strongly typed to it's own ViewModel that is populated from the Model layer.
Models do not necessarily have a literal coorespondence with the database either. How you store data your model is different from how your "Model" uses that data.