Whidbey debate: Is the page an application ?

Alister post this comment regarding the conversation I reported on Widbey concerns:

To add my two cents, maybe in Orcas the page will be the Application and the UI will be generated from the page. It means that in this case we go full circle, back to a proprietary system, where the UI (Windows, HTML, XHTML, etc...) doesn't matter.

I'm pleased to hear that you found my email conversation with Bertrand Le Roy "exciting and deep".

I think that one of the things Microsoft has done wrong, from a communications point of view, is use the term Whidbey to refer both to version 2 of the ASP.NET framework, and to the 2005 version of its VS.NET tool.

We both wonder about the fuss with MasterPages, for example. From a code/framework point of view, we might think, "What's the big deal?" But from the point of view of the IDE, it may be a very big deal. A tighter integration between the framework, the application, and the IDE can only be a good thing.

One of the things that dawned on me during my exchange with Bertrand, and I think bears repeating, is the concept of the ASPX Page as an *application* surface, not a UI surface.

If we see the Page as representing the UI of an application, then it feels "wrong" to place data sources on the Page. Conversely, if we see the Page as representing the application surface, then it's perfectly valid to place data sources on the Page.

I personally find it extremely hard to visualize an n-tiered application. Yet I find it very easy to visualize an application surface, onto which I place the pieces I need ... much like Lego blocks onto the traditional green base.

I think that seeing the Page as an application surface brings our understanding of ASP.NET more in line with the direction that the ASP.NET Team is taking. It provides a conceptual base from which we can understand *why* data objects and business objects are being placed on the Page itself.

That is perhaps the most powerful idea that I took away from my exhange with Bertrand. So, I thought I might add it here as a kind of epilogue to this archive.

(Thanks for this archive, by the way.)