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Asked: 2026-05-13T16:04:31+00:00

I am having a difficult time understanding two design approaches in terms of long

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I am having a difficult time understanding two design approaches in terms of long time extensibility in my current ASP.NET MVC application.

The ORM that I use for providing data is Linq2SQL. Which is just amazing to work with, BTW!

Now I am having some trouble with the design of my model classes for my views. Currently I’ve got a partial class for each entity in the database.

  • This approach allows me to extend the class without having to switch the strongly typed model on my views
  • I can easily add further properties for extra data (mostly meta)
  • I can easily add helper methods which populate lists for me and/or do other data transactions
  • One problem remains:
    • I can’t create a custom constructor as this is already managed by Linq2SQL

After reading the ASP.NET MVC Book and some tutorials, I see a very common use of FormViewModels for providing extra data on an object.

Currently I am very comfortable with the partial class design for my entities. But I wouldn’t mind switching the design as I am still building the application.

What are the benefits of the FormViewModel instead of an easy partial class approach and what are the best practices in this matter?

All help is more than appreciated!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As with so many things, it depends. If your app is small, and you have a one-to-one relationship between what the user sees, you may not need view models. You can expose your models directly. Most apps are small apps.

    As you application, specifically your UI, grows you may find that you want a greater separation between the data-tier model object and the presentation-tier model object. That’s where view models come in. Even though the properties are the same (i.e. User has FirstName, LastName, EmailAddress, etc.), the methods and requirements of the models are different. View models let you adhere more closely to the Single Responsibility Principle.

    Please don’t believe that it is some cardinal sin to not use view models. No one in the Rails world uses view models. (At least that I could find. And Rails is a dynamic language, so that changes a lot of the rules right there.)

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