"The basic deal with MVC is there is the model, which is any set of .Net objects; the view, which is the HTML or a template that represents how the data should be formatted for the user; and the controller, that puts them together," Abrams said.

ASP.NET MVC uses Microsoft's LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology in the form of LINQ to SQL. "It prepares the data objects and hands everything off to the view," Abrams said. Not only does ASP.NET MVC leverage the benefits of ASP.NET, it is "the first project that takes advantage of the 3.5 features in the .Net framework, such as LINQ and anonymous types," he said.

Meanwhile, the Visual Studio integration makes testing easy, he said. However, for more involved testing, developers can use a tool such as Rhino Mocks, Haack said.

Haack also noted how extensible the ASP.NET MVC technology is. "We found some bugs in the CTP and we were able to get around them by simply swapping out components," rather than doing entire rewrites, he said.

Microsoft also has started work on an ASP.NET Dynamic Data project, which builds heavily on the work the company has done with LINQ and enables developers to create user interfaces based on what they know about the data, Abrams said.

In a Feb. 12 blog post on the technology, Guthrie wrote: "All of these features (ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and the new ASP.NET AJAX improvements) will ship later this year and work with VS 2008 and .NET 3.5."

Meanwhile, David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, welcomed Microsoft into the MVC fold.

"I think MVC is a really nice, simple way of partitioning the concerns of a Web application that people in most every environment could benefit from," Hansson told eWEEK. "So it's good from an industry perspective to see Microsoft finally start to pay attention."

Hansson said the PHP community and now Microsoft have taken notice of the advantages of MVC.

"It seems that Microsoft is taking notice, that's for sure," he said. "The proposed MVC extensions to ASP.NET bear more than a striking resemblance to the way we implemented things in Rails. That's of course flattering to have a giant like Microsoft attempt to copy many of the ideas that we've been championing for years now, but they do appear to be a little late to the party."

Not one to often pass on the opportunity to gibe, Hansson said: "I think Microsoft is just doing what they always do: Following."

Marc Fleury, former CEO of JBoss, said, "MVC is an accepted way to develop applications in the Java camp. Discussions on MVC are very advanced and there are a number of frameworks. I would venture that this is way to a) offer familiar methodologies to Java developer, and b) offer new options to existing ASP.NET developers."