Best Practices for 3 Tier Development

Question

Does anyone know of any documentation by MS or someone else that lays out the best practices for developing a 3 tier architecture in ASP.NET. I am in the process of trying to convince my boss that the current architecture needs rethought and reworked to provide a flexible and reusable system. I have found a lot of generic documentation that tells you at a high level the best practices as far as how to do this but little showing how you actually implement them. I need to show him documentation as far as the advantages to using business objects versus data sets and things to that level of detail. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Microsoft's Patterns & Practices group has published various whitepapers and documents in the form of "architectural guidance" that can be helpful. They recently published a number of "pocket guides" as well. Even if you don't follow them to the letter, they're likely to be a great starting point for discussing your particular needs.

That they come from Microsoft may also help add credibility in the discussion with your boss. There's one on Web Application Architecture, in particular, that sounds like it may be relevant.

Answer 2

I would highly recommend looking into ASP.NET MVC. It's a far better option for n-tier appliactions as it allows for a greater degree of Seperation Of Concerns. This leads to a more testable and maintanable application that can be achieved with ASP.NET