Walking from the hotel this morning, Peter Blum made me see Dynamic Data in a new light. I’ve been thinking of Dynamic Data in the way that most people talk about it, as a scaffolding engine. Peter’s view is that it’s true value lies in the dynamic controls and metadata and I agree. I’ve both attended and done talks on Dynamic Data whose sole view was showing the page templates with the GridView and DetailsView. When doing these talks myself I’ve often said that I can’t see it being used in many places; there are a limited number of applications that actually need full scaffolding of tables.

The true beauty, as Peter sees it, is in using the Dynamic Controls, probably within a FormView, where you have control of the UI. Using the dynamic controls, sitting on top of the attributed metadata, gives you consistent views of your data, consistent exposure of your model and the rules associated with it. It’s an intriguing concept which I’ll have to dig into in more detail.