MVVM is a Microsoft-specific alternative of the
Presentation Model pattern thoroughly discussed in this
MSDN article, and is primarly meant to be used in Silverlight and WPF applications.
MVC is one of the oldest patterns for solving user interface testability, and has been adopted by Microsoft in their ASP.NET MVC framework.
MVP is Model-View-Presenter and is discussed in detail in this
MSDN article. It was heavily used in the
Web Client Software Factory and I have personally used it in many ASP.NET projects. However, because of the way the code-behind files must implement an interface provided by the presenter, and the amount of pain this introduces when your creating unit tests
for your presenter logic, I've switched to Presentation Model.
In essence, you choice is rather simple. If you're doing WPF or Silverlight, use MVVM. If you're doing ASP.NET Web Forms or Compact Framework, use Presentation Model. If you want excellent testability and rigoruous control on the HTML output or you want
to be one of those boys, use ASP.NET MVC.
Dennis Doomen
Principal Consultant at
Aviva Solutions
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