A successful ASP.NET application needs to accomplish its functional goals, provide a comfortable user experience, and be easy to deploy, maintain, and extend. ASP.NET MVC is a development framework designed around these principles. It provides the structure you need to follow the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern, in which an application is divided into three distinct parts: * Models, the objects that contain an application's logic * Views, the components that create the user interface of an application * Controllers, the components that handle and respond to user input Applications built with ASP.NET MVC are easier to test, maintain, and extend because the architecture and role of each component is well-defined. And since it's built from the ground up as a core part of the .NET framework, it integrates seamlessly with the ASP.NET features, such as Web Forms or Master Pages, that you already use. ASP.NET MVC 3 in Action is a fast-paced tutorial designed to introduce ASP.NET MVC to .NET developers and show how to apply it effectively. After a high-speed ramp up, the book explores key topics like validation, routing, and data access. Each topic is illustrated with its own example so it's easy to dip into the book without reading in sequence. This book also covers some high-value, high-end techniques you won't find anywhere else! The book bases all its examples on ASP.NET MVC 3, so you'll get full coverage of major new features such as the Razor view engine, the new Web Matrix helpers, and improved extensibility. MVC 3 is also the first version built exclusively against .NET 4, so you'll see how your ASP.NET applications can benefit from changes in the .NET Framework.