Silverlight MVVM framework

Question

Just out of curiosity, wanted to know if there is a need to use any MVVM frame work available as third party installable or we can directly create and define different projects in our application and call them as Model, ViewModel and View, and also use them as per their definition.

Does the third party framework provide anything extra and can a application as mentioned in the above paragraph can be called as MVVM compliant.

Answer 1

No you don't have to use any third party framework, you can just follow the design pattern. You can follow this link to find out more.

http://www.silverlight.net/learn/advanced-techniques/the-mvvm-pattern/using-the-mvvm-pattern-in-silverlight-applications

Answer 2

If you're looking for an MVVM framework then I would suggest Catel

The approach which you're thinking of is not what I personally would call 'MVVM compliant' (altough it is only a pattern). Normally your Models are classes to describe and access your data (Linq2Sql entities), ViewModel are classes which drive the applications business logic and your Views are just windows/pages etc. Normally I just create folders in my main project for all three of them and take it from there but sometimes it is a good idea to get the Models into a separate project if they are going to be used by other ones but I would normally call it something like MyProjectData