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I have an existing application which is quite large, uses a SQL Server database and LINQ to SQL built in MVC. It does what it needs to do very well, but the CMS is sadly lacking (it's difficult, complicated to use and prone to errors).

I like the look of Composite C1 to migrate this application to so that my users can get a good CMS experience.

I don't really want to center my development around C1, so I've been looking at creating an MVC application:

http://docs.composite.net/Functions/MVC

I've created a sample controller, view and then returned some static data to the view and finally posted some data to the controller. All works as a "normal" MVC application would do.

Has anyone used this concept for a real world application? The idea is that if a user want's to display one of my controls on a page they just add the control via the Composite editor. I'll also add basic pages on installation.

It's a bit of a vague question, but I'm really looking for feedback on the following:

1) How "involved" do you need to be with Composite C1 stuff? I want to just create my controllers and other classes to do my work

2) How is the performance with this approach?

3) Is there many gotcha's that you've experienced?

Paul
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I have built a larger application within/on top of a Composite C1 environment, so I can say its definitely possible and the compatibility with .NET application development is actually one of the main reasons why we chose Composite in the first place.

1) How "involved" do you need to be with Composite C1 stuff? I want to just create my controllers and other classes to do my work

You won't be able to completely ignore everything Composite related when developing a full fledged application however, simply because your controls/views/controllers will run on and be rendered by Composite C1. So necessarily some of the work is done at least in part by the C1 foundation you build on, e.g. Routing, Exception Handling or Rendering.

However you can usually work with or around those features without too much trouble. It may however take some understanding of how Composite works.

2) How is the performance with this approach?

So far I cannot say that Composite would slow down the application in any significant way. It may in fact support you in tasks like Output Caching.

3) Is there many gotcha's that you've experienced?

This is a very broad question, but you generally will always have to make sure you know whether something belongs in one of your controls or would be better fit into a Composite component (page, reusable html block). If you put things into the wrong place, the easiest things will become complicated (like creating a page link) due to information being not present in the current context. But as I said, you can solve this through clever design.

Another thing to look out for is that correct source versioning is a bit harder to set up in the first place with a Composite application, because you have to figure out what is content and what is application.

So far I have made good experiences with C1 and will be using it in the future. It may take a little more time to get into it in the first place compared to a vanilla ASP.NET application, but the work that is done for you regarding CMS parts is well worth it.

magnattic
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