Microsoft releases second candidate for MVC Web apps platform upgrade

InfoWorld - Microsoft is offering a second release candidate for its ASP.Net MVC 2 technology, which enables developers to build Web applications using a model view controller pattern.

Released last week, Release Candidate 2 of ASP.Net MVC 2 follows a release candidate build shipped in December, said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Microsoft developer division, in an entry on his ASP.Net blog. The release is built for use with Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5.

[ Last month, InfoWorld reported that Microsoft is set to launch its Visual Studio 2010 platform on April 12, after having delayed it for a few weeks because of performance issues. ]

"[The second release candidate] includes a bunch of bug fixes, performance work, and some final API and behavior additions/changes," Guthrie said. Significant performance tuning improvements have been made, such as lambda-based strongly typed HTML helpers being much faster.

Among other changes between the first and second release candidates is an ASP.Net MVC 2 validation feature that performs model-validation instead of input validation, Guthrie said. This means when a developer uses model binding, all model properties are validated instead of just validations on changed values of a model.

Also, the jQuery 1.4.1 JavaScript library is included by default.

Visual Studio, Guthrie said, now features scaffolding support for Delete action methods within controllers and Delete views as well. "We'll shortly be releasing the Visual Studio 2010 RC (Release Candidate), which will be available for everyone to download. It will include ASP. NET MVC 2 support built-in," Guthrie said.

ASP.Net MVC 2 is an update to ASP.Net MVC 1.0, which shipped in March 2009, according to Microsoft. Microsoft has not yet announced a final release date for ASP.Net MVC 2.

The MVC framework "encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application -- the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model," Microsoft said on a download page for the release candidate. "ASP.Net MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development."

This story, "Microsoft moves on MVC Web apps platform upgrade," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in software development at InfoWorld.com.

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