What do you think of ASP.NET Dynamic Data?

I have been heavily invested in ASP.NET Dynamic Data since pre Beta 1 of ASP.NET 3.5 SP1. To me, this technology is significant and clever, although with its flaws. (My products DES Dynamic Data and Versatile DataSources are intended to address those flaws.)

My impression is that there is a poor adoption rate for ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and I want to better understand why. Please take a moment and post a comment on these questions.

1. Have you used ASP.NET Dynamic Data?

2. What do you like about it?

3. What do you dislike about it?

4. If you have evaluated it but not used it, why?

Your answers may help both the ASP.NET team and myself as we attempt to improve both the technology and user education.

6 Comments

  • 1. Have you used ASP.NET Dynamic Data?

    No, ASP.NET Web forms and LINQ does what I need.

    2. What do you like about it?

    I like data-drive implied in it's name.

    3. What do you dislike about it?

    Web Forms does what I need.  It took me a lot to learn the basics and it is taking me even more to become good at it; because ASP.NET is huge API. I  have little time to explore anything that I do not clearly sense will make work easier; even though  may require fewer lines of code then what I already use. I need something more before I adopt yet another new API.

    4. If you have evaluated it but not used it, why?

    I just reviewed a few articles. I see it like ASP.NET MVC. Web form does the trick and those Microsoft guy are burning energy on making different things that all have the same end results. We reached the pinnacle of what we will get out of languages like C# and Java and need a new language paradigm. Consider, .NET reached its peak at 2.0; everything else is just more sugar in the coffee. After a point either you get a new cup of coffe  or you will end up having more sugar than actual coffee in the current cup.  
    [Peter's feedback] Thanks! It's taken me a while to really appreciate DD. In my current mindset, it does two things to help you: 1) separates the business logic from the web form so you can manage it easier 2) creates elements of the web form for you using ordinary webcontrols like textboxes and validators, by following the rules from your business logic. I think this has nothing to do with .net reaching its peak in 2.0. Its more about applying a methodology to building web forms using separation of concerns.


  • 1. Yes, used it as part of a fully-fledged asp.net webforms app in an Enterprise environment.
    2. TEMPLATING!  We have frickin' employee id's and postcodes everywhere.  Now all I have to do to get proper validation on them wherever they are is assign an attribute to my class property. Oh, and the auto-generated CRUD app is good too.
    3. Some of the attributes need some more work - length validation for example.  Why do I have to specify a MAX length if I specify a MIN ? Can't the MAX be pulled from the model?
    [Peter's feedback] I would love to hear your list of issues. Email me plblum@peterblum.com. (I will also be happy to forward it to the ASP.NET Dynamic Data team.) 

  • 1. Have you used ASP.NET Dynamic Data?
    Yes,  although not the current version.
    2. What do you like about it?
    Seems to be very useful if you need ot build somethign quickly.
    3. What do you dislike about it?
    Doesnt seem to get much press - not too many people pushing the name and what it can do.
    4. If you have evaluated it but not used it, why?
    It looked like it would be useful for demo only purposes as with a lot of things it looked to have some flaws and therefore hard to sell to the mainstream.
    [Peter's feedback] One of my goals is to learn what users consider are those flaws. Would you care to post a more extensive list or to email them to me (plblum@peterblum.com). I'll make sure the ASP.NET Dynamic Data team also sees them.

  • 4. If you have evaluated it but not used it, why?
    Evaluated it about 6 months back, but decided not to use it.

    Most of our products use Oracle for the backend. We started moving toward Nhibernate (Fluent) to handle data access. All of our searching for a DD implementation with Nhibernate only lead to convoluted "hack" solutions.

    What we were most interested in was the CRUD automation. In fact, we rolled our own version to meet our basic needs and have enhanced it along the way as our needs have grown. We took a convention over configuration approach and a very similar approach to FluentNh.


  • Is there a way to embed DD as a WebPart? If so, how?
    [Peter's comments] I recommend posting this to the Dynamic Data forum at www.asp.net's forums.


  • I am looking at DD as below is going over my head...

    " ... we have a n-tier application where in the DAL is exposed via service, how do I get to have the ObjectContext travel from the service to the ASP.NET layer. I currently use the DomainDataSource at the Service layer ... I am not able to get hands on the Entity at UI layer to be connected the Grid or a QueryExtender..."

    Is there a way I could get the Data tansferred referenced by EF to the upper most ASP page, run it through the DD inside a webpart?
    [Peter's comments] I'm not sure that I have the answer. Always look into the relevant forums at www.asp.net and msdn.microsoft.com. In the case of DomainDataSource, you are looking into a prerelease of "RIA Services".
    Here's an educated guess on how to use DomainDataSource to connect through a web service. You presently have an ObjectContext subclass talking to EF. That will handle the server side of this web service. Create a second ObjectContext subclass with the same methods, which call the original one's methods through web services. Use that new ObjectContext with your DomainDataSource.


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