Model View Controller for Web Applications

I have begun doing server-side development again. I am working with a small team to develop some small applications. The goal is to develop the applications quickly and server as an interim solution until a new Human Resources Management System is purchased. We are building on top of ColdFusionMX, Oracle 9i, running under IIS5.0 on Windows 2000. It is not my ideal web development environment, but I am starting to appreciated both ColdFusion and Oracle. The deployment environment was established by the IT infrastructure group which is outside of my control.

To help separate the different sections of application logic to make it easier for both concurrent development and for code maintenance, I wanted to use an established development framework. One of the most developed frameworks for ColdFusion is Fusebox. Fusebox is a Model-View-Controller for web development. It is very similar to other MVC frameworks including Phrame, Struts and other Model 2 frameworks.

Fusebox has been a very development framework. We have been doing the development in the Fusebox Lifecycle Process (FLiP) is a very light weight, user-centric approach. I have been using a very similar approach for the past 4 or 5 years. The basic approach is to define the problem, conduct user research delivered in Personas. Then create an initial wireframes and test with users. Iterate. Then begin application architecting, fusebox coding, unit testing and finally integration. The process has worked very well.

In the next couple of days, I’ll share my experience with and thoughts of Fusebox as a development framework.