Developing the 2012 version of my site, I decided to push my programming abilities to the limit. I wanted to explore and understand a three-tier application. I also wanted to understand and explore how to create asp.net custom controls.

I decided to work towards a full BLL (Business Logic Layer) and DAL (Data Access Layer), I utilized connected SQL for this project. I had been paying attention to my patterns in development of several smaller sites as well as working for CST Industries and determined that I had a pattern for how I developed websites. This pattern determined whether I used a DropDownList, or Multiline TextBox. It also determined which validators I added.

So, I had to ask myself... if I'm following a specific pattern to develop a FormView, why should I go through all of that work? Why not write a custom control that takes those considerations into account and dynamically builds the control.

In the end, I had created database driven forms with a .Net website. Even the routing system was built from the database.

The object oriented techniques used created an amazingly dynamic site, however, the processing needed caused a site that was slower to load then preferred, especially with the size of .Net's viewstate.

While this created an amazing site, it lead me to focus and learn more about MVC websites for their extensibility as well as greater reusability.