Do you think ASP.Net Dynamic Data is worth it?

Question

At the risk of sounding misinformed, I'm under the belief that this is basically useful for RAD and fast sketching of an application.

It feels somewhat Ruby-esque in the sense that it scaffolds pretty much everything you need from a CRUD application. Easier work for us, right; and most people are none the wiser.

I'm fairly green in the workplace, I just start working at an actual job as a developer (cubicles and free coffee) so my opinions might be a bit on the green side, but I'd love some comments from more senior people.

Is this somewhere between MVC2(basic scaffolding) and Microsoft Lightswitch(wizard-driven development)? Is it worth ivesting in?

Answer 1

One of the best uses I've heard for Dynamic Data was to quickly build up an Django-like admin section for a site. It doesn't have to be "perfect" since it isn't aimed at users, but it does give you some nice usability quickly and easily.

Answer 2

I know very little about it but it doesn't sounds like something I would consider. Whenever I work on a an application we tend to follow some basic architectural guidelines such as layering/reusability etc. Typically I tend to get away from shortcut tools/frameworks as this one. There are a lot of "neat" tools that are available in the .NET world that have their place in certain small business/internal app space perhaps, but are not a great idea for a well designed application. For example embedding SQL into the datasource controls that can be bound directly to GridViews, etc.

Answer 3

I was skeptical at first, but now I use Dynamic Data almost as much as I do "standard" ASP.NET sites. Out of the box, it's pretty generic, but it's customizable, and you can include standard ASP.NET pages in it.

At first, I would use it as a separate Admin site when I needed a "back door" into the data from a "standard" app. Lately, however, my approach has been to do some more planning, and decide which of the tables I would like users to access via the Dynamic Data mechanisms, and which data I want more fine control over. You can scaffold only the table you want, and this works good for "lookup" tables where you want an end user to be able to add/delete. An example would be in our email coupon program, where customers can sign up to receive coupons via email. They can choose their coupon categories - hot foods, beverages, gas, produce, etc. The administrator of the overall coupon program needs to be able to add and remove categories, and Dynamic Data is WONDERFUL for this sort of thing.

Dynamic data takes care of the data validation (a huge plus for security AND usability), mapping our relationships (a HUGE time saver) and just "does it right". In the business environment, security and productivity are two very real concerns that are handled poorly by most developers, and Dynamic Data seems to handle the basics well.

So yes, I do think it's worth it. It's very powerful and an excellent tool to have in your toolbox, but one that should be wielded with skill, which takes time and practice. And it should not be the only tool in your toolbox.

Answer 4

Personally I like to use Dynamic Data for admin pages, those pages that nobody actually gets to see but need to be there in a usable way for some admin user. In the past those used to take quite some effort on the dev team to craft together but with Dynamic Data it's an almost out of the box experience.

I suggest you take a look at Tailspin travel which is an application in MVC 2 but uses Dynamic Data, integrated in the same UI project, for the admin side.