MonoRail Screencast - Rapid and Maintainable ASP.NET Web Application Development
by David Hayden ( Sarasota Web Design ), Filed: Castle
I just watched Ayende's MonoRail Screencast which provides a good comparison of Webforms vs. MonoRail as well as a good look at the capabilities of MonoRail. This screencast is a must see in my opinion. Great example of the extensibility of MonoRail as well as how it helps you write ASP.NET Web Applications that maintain a nice separation of concerns between the UI and Business Model.
He brings up a great point that although the Rapid Application Development features of Webforms help you build web applications quickly, everything is typically stuffed away in the UI and near impossible to maintain / sustain for anything more than demonstration code or very simple websites. The nice thing about MonoRail is that it gives you both the simplicity of development as well as the maintainability. He shows some simple examples of this when you want to page a DataGrid and highlight rows based on certain business specifications.
Although I think there are good reasons to use the Web Client Software Factory, MonoRail is truly much more feature-rich and easier to develop maintainable web applications. I also find that the Castle Team is a helluva lot more responsive to community needs ( because they are using MonoRail, too ), more transparent in what they are working on, quicker in turning out new features, and just much more Agile than the Web Client Software Factory Team.
I also think the Castle Team should just use Screencasts as a way of documenting their projects. I learned more in this past hour watching Ayende's screencast than I ever did/would from their website. Awesome job, Ayende. Thanks for all you do in the community!
Again, watch the screencast.
Source: David Hayden ( Sarasota Web Development )
Filed: Castle