View this PageEdit this PageAttachments to this PageHistory of this PageHomeRecent ChangesSearch the SwikiHelp Guide
Hotspots: Admin Pages | Turn-in Site |
Current Links: Case Final Project Summer 2007

Fall01 Final Exam Review: MVC vs. Morphic

Back to Final Exam Review - Fall2001


a) MVC is preferable when there is a model with multiple views looking at it. For instance if you had a hospital system which has a large database of patient information. Multiple doctors can be looking at the data at the same time. In this case it would be much better to have MVC because it handles multiple views much easier than Morphic.
b) Morphic would be better in a 3D game because it handles multimedia better.
c)
Morphic merges the model and view
MVC relies on the three sections being completely independent of each other.
In Morphic, everything is a Morph and can be a window
Second attempt :)
Morphic embeds the complicated controller part of the GUI into the GUI so that a class must only define certain methods to handle otherwise complicated events.
Morphic allows for Prototype inheritance as opposed to class based inheritance. Prototype inhertitance is when you subclass an instance. Allows for much faster GUI design but is harder to maintain.
In Morphic, everything is a window and every Morphic object has a specific set of behaviors(such as being able to add other morphs and halo menu features)

Jared Parsons
Morphic programs can separate the model and view. Other differences? Hint: Think about controllers. Mark Guzdial

There isn't a Morphic paradigm like the MVC paradigm, but there are certainly design decisions in Morphic that make it different from MVC. For example, Jared's point that everything has the same rights as a window. In the lecture, I also talked about issues like concreteness and uniformity – anybody remember what those are about? There's also the issue of where the event loop is in Morphic – anyone? Mark Guzdial
Jared's point about prototype inheritance is interesting. Strictly speaking, it's the eToy framework that has prototype inheritance, but it certainly is true that Morphic has hooks in it that make prototype inheritance easier. Mark Guzdial


Weaknesses in MVC:
Matt Quigley
Matt, your second weakness is actually a strength. You CAN do multiple views of the same model in MVC. Can you do it in Morphic or Visual Basic where view and model are merged? Mark Guzdial

a. MVC is better if you want to write a Squeak object that a PDA can use because MVC is lighter weight and more portable.
b. Morphic is better If you want to write an sprite-based view of our AGAdventureGames because Morphic handles multimedia faster.
c. 1. Morphic objects are uniform, ie they all have base morphic behavior (halos, etc.)
2. Morphic objects can be composed of smaller morphic subcomponents.
3. Morphic objects exist in a "World", or rather Morphic requires an environment that MVC does not, so it isn't as "bare bones" as MVC.
- Stephen Ingram

How do you separate the model from the view in morphic? However since it was stated that this is possible it follows that multiple views on a model would be possible. I don't know enough about VB but it doesn't seem as if you could, as the model and view are merge requiring each view to have its own model. Am i correct?
Robert Schierholz


Link to this Page