ASP.NET MVC 2 released

Microsoft has made ASP.NET MVC 2, an alternative to the HTML abstraction technology in ASP.NET WebForms, available to download. Microsoft's implementation of the the "Model-View-Controller" principle is suitable for development scenarios where precise layer separation and control over the HTML output are more important than developer productivity. It allows ASP.NET developers to work with a widely used architecture and design pattern which treats the database and XML code (Model), user interface elements (Views) and logic (Controller) as separate components.

Like its predecessor release, which Microsoft also made available as open source code under the OSI-compliant Microsoft Public Licence (Ms-PL), the new version is available from Microsoft's CodePlex hosting site for open source projects. According to Scott Guthrie, who is responsible for Microsoft's web platforms, the technology has so far been downloaded almost a million times. The new version is compatible with its predecessor and works with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. Microsoft plan to include Visual Studio 2010, the next generation of Microsoft's development environment scheduled for release in mid April, with ASP.NET MVC 2. The vendor has released instructions for updating ASP.NET-1 applications to the new version.

Among the new features are a new validation technology and new HTML input helpers which support lambda expression. Asynchronous controllers for parallel long running tasks, auto-scaffolding UI helpers and the ability to render subsections of site pages, are also incorporated into the release. The current version of the jQuery JavaScript library is included in new "ASP.NET MVC 2" projects by default. The framework is based on the runtime environment of Microsoft's ASP.NET 3.5 web framework, which allows it to support ASP.NET features such as localisation, authorisation and profiles.

Visual Studio developers can consider using their Model-View-Controller templates within ASP.NET MVC when developing web applications. The framework is to be expandable throughout and supports, for instance, dependency injection technologies and special controllers. The "What's New in ASP.NET MVC 2" web page discusses the features of the new version in detail.

(djwm)