Question

The ViewModel can notify the View about property change by raising property change event. If the underlying data (for example, a Plain class which do not implement IPropertyChange) changes, how can ViewModel get notified?

Answer 1

If the underlying data (for example, a Plain class which do not implement IPropertyChange) changes, how can ViewModel get notified?

It cannot, there has to be a mechanism in place to do the notification. The most likely cause is a POCO that is used in one region (or module) of the application is also being used in another, i.e. a loosely coupled master-detail situation. If you are “sharing” the same instance of a POCO like this, then it is unlikely that you haven’t also implemented change notification in it. If you have implemented change notification, then a change in one module of the application will automatically be visible to the other module (they are both looking at the same object) and anything that watches for that change notification (like a binding subsystem) will do its thing and pick up the changes.

If you have two separate instances of the same data and one gets updated, the other will not know about it. This also happens when your VM requests data via the Model, and the Model retrieves the data from a disconnected data source like a database or a web service. You don’t know when the underlying data has been changed, once again you need to implement a change notification system. You can also take another aproach with this – let the user change the data, then do a fresh grab of the data before saving the user’s changes, and if the underlying data has changed while the user was working then you can notify the user and take the appropriate action (or let the user choose the appropriate thing to do).

Does this answer your question? Or do you care to elaborate more about what you are wanting to know?