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ACCU Conference 2009 Proposal (2)

Title: MVC in practice - A Beginners Guide to Model View Controller

Type: Case study

Duration: 45 min

Speaker: Paul Grenyer

Speaker biography: Paul has been programming in one form or another for over 20 years. After several years using C++ and a brief period using C#, Paul has now ended up somewhere he hoped he'd never be, programming in Java, and finding he really quite likes it. After time in industries such as marking machinery, direct mail, mobile phones, investment banking and Internet TV, Paul is currently working for an exciting new insurance industry based startup in Norwich. He has been an ACCU member since 2001, a regular publications contributor (including the new Desert Island Books column), creator of the mentored developers and a committee member for most of that time. When he's not programming or getting used to married life and being a step parent, Paul thoroughly enjoys science fiction, heavy metal and cycling.


In this session I am going to describe a real problem I had and demonstrate how I solved it using the model View Controller Pattern. I'll describe two versions of the pattern and the compare the advantages and disadvantages of both, before concentrating on the mediator version of the pattern.

I'll look at the library and language features that can be used to implement MVC available in both Java and C#. Once the model, the most important part of the pattern, is implemented the rest of the pattern comes together quite easily. I'll explain the implementation of the model that solved my problem and show how important unit tests are, especially for the model, and how to implement them. Finally I'll look at the implementation of the controller and a couple of views. Examples will be in both Java and C#, but no prior knowledge of the languages is required to understand the pattern.

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