Advantages and Disadvantages of using ASP.NET MVC Framework

Here is a list of pros and cons of using ASP.NET MVC Framework.

ASP.NET MVC 2 Framwork is released as a part of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. Now it even has better model and standards than the previous version. If you want to build your applications around MVC amework, here are some pros and cons.

Here are the main advantages of building your applications using MVC framework.

• MVC Framework is built upon a proven MVC design-pattern. Hence, this is not a new born baby. 
• One of the biggest problem in ASP.NET is HTML size of controls and view state. View state stores all the data rendered and final HTML gets too large. If you are on a slow internet connection, you will notice load time delays. This has been taken care in MVC framework. There is no view state concept in MVC framework.
• Client chaching is availalbe now with the help of Silverlight. By integrating Silverlight, we can take advantage of it. That makes applications load faster and some of the processing can be done in web browsers.Not only the client site but the server side execution is faster too. JQuery integration with MVC makes it even better and now we can write our code that runs in the browser and takes away load from the server.
• Support mutliple views
• Support unit testing as a part of Visual Studio 2008 and 2010

Some of the key challanges you may face when using MVC Framework are

• It is not easy to understand and code when you need some customization. If you are building based on a 100% mature database, they you are golden. But if you have frequent changes in your database, you may find it annoying to keep building application again and again. It may also breake several other parts of your application.
• If you are using Silverlight part of it, the data access is limited to Web Services/WCF/ADO.NET Data Services.  You cannot make direct calls via ADO.NET or stored procedures to a database. Also, you may find it hard to learn LINQ as a new technology to access data.

Here are some further readings on this topic you may find useful.

• What's New in ASP.NET MVC 2: The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site
• ASP.NET MVC Pro's and Con's
• My Quick Oversimplified ASP.Net MVC Pros and Cons
• MVC pattern pros and cons