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I am using entity framework in my latest ASP.NET MVC 3 project. As it is DB first, the entity framework generates Database models. In my service (business) layer I Scaffold (MvcScaffolding) to generate service methods, views and controllers. Scaffolding also generates the domain models. When binding these models to the Views, I use view models.
In short, I ended up in using three types of models. Is this Ok? The view models are kept in the Presentation layer, domain models are kept in the business layer and data models are kept in the repository layer.
Please let me know your thoughts.
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A model is usually more closely related to how your data is stored (database, services, etc.) and the model will closely resemble those. The ViewModel on the other hand is closely related to how your data is presented to the user. It is usually a flatten version of your model, denormalized, etc.
VIEW: ( Platform Specific Code – USER INTERFACE ) What the user sees, The Formatted data. VIEWMODEL: ( Reusable Code – LOGIC ) Link between Model and View OR It Retrieves data from Model and exposes it to the View. This is the model specifically designed for the View.
A domain model is a representation of the organization's data, independent of the way the data is stored in the database, with a domain being the collection of all the objects in that system, while the data model is used in database design and development.
Model–view–viewmodel (MVVM) is a software architectural pattern that facilitates the separation of the development of the graphical user interface (the view) – be it via a markup language or GUI code – from the development of the business logic or back-end logic (the model) so that the view is not dependent on any ...
That sounds fine and indeed has several benefits.
You can recreate your database models from scratch without affecting the domain models, except how they are mapped of course. Some would argue that these two could be merged into one but it deeply depends on your setup.
Separate view models will allow you more freedom to change and create new viewmodels to suit your views. It also helps preventing late loading proxies etc.
Many people would also have a Dto set of objects. These come in useful as a set of objects for caching and also if you have more than one UI, say a windows service as well.
Automapper is very popular to ease the pain of having so many models to map.
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