ViewModel + .NET RIA Services Part 2: Testability, Server Mocking and Dependencies

In Part 1 of ViewModel and .NET RIA Services , which I recommend you check out first if you haven't, I created a simple product search UI using Silverlight and .NET RIA Services using the ViewModel (aka MVVM) pattern. One of benefits of the ViewModel pattern is that it creates a nice contract between the view and associated logic, i.e. a contract between the designer and the developer. Another key benefit of the ViewModel pattern is that it furthers testability - more of your presentation tier is now unit testable. This post touches on that second benefit. In doing so, it will allow me to go into a couple of other related topics: First, this application uses .NET RIA Services . This post will demonstrate how you can mock out the server when...(read more) ...