Question

I’m about to write quite a big web site that will basically be a forum, divided to (many) different subjects and allow users’ score.

I’ll be using MVC, so I (“naively”) asked this question about how to partition the Model portion  of MVC, which is likely to be very large.
Two things I realized from the answers I got:

1. I really don’t know much about designing software.
2. There are many ways to implement MVC

So I have now two questions:

1. (That’s a bit theoretical-) Would
   you say designing a software is
   completely deterministic i.e.- For a
   specific set of requirements there
   is one best design? If not- why?
2. What are the common components
   (necessary and optional) of MVC that
   I should consider in writing my site
   (resources for beginners would be
   great)?

Answer 1

Although Java/JSP/Servlet targeted, you may get some useful insights out of this answer. It describes the common patterns to be used in MVC and the approach how to fit them all together. Here’s a summary:

• Front Controller pattern (Mediator pattern) – the controller
• Strategy pattern – the business actions
• Abstract factory pattern – to let controller obtain the desired business action.
• Facade pattern – to abstract the raw HTTP details away.
• State pattern – to introduce a lifecycle which abstracts gathering of request parameters, validation, conversion, updating model values, etc away.
• Composite pattern – to create an advanced component tree for the view.