Overview

ASP.NET MVC is an open source platform for building web applications using the MVC architecture introduced by Microsoft. MVC is nothing but Model-View-Controller and initially was called by the name “Thing-Model-View-Editor".

Figure: Model-View-Controller

The MVC design pattern is defined in three layers like Model, View and Controller.

• Model: It is a collection of classes or library files for the business layer with a specific domain functionality. The business layer contains a set of business rules, entities and components for data manipulation purposes.
• View: It is a representation of an application user interface (in other words Presentation layer).
• Controller: It is a collection of classes that handle interaction from the user request and the response to display the information to the view. 

Microsoft first released the ASP.NET MVC1 and included code development and Test Driven Development (TDD) like unit tests.

Microsoft's second release of the ASP.NET MVC2 provides automatic scaffolding with customizable templates, attribute-based model validation on both client & server and strongly typed HTML helpers.

Microsoft's third release of the ASP.NET MVC3 provides a Razor view engine, data annotation and improved model validation, flexibility, dependency resolutions, global actions filters, support JavaScript, jQuery validation, JSON binding and NuGet.

Microsoft came up with ASP.NET MVC4 that provides ASP.NET WebAPI, default project templates, Mobile project template using jQuery Mobile and so on.

Microsoft later released ASP.NET MVC5 that provides One ASP.Net, ASP.NET Identity, Bootstrap and Authentication Filters and attribute routing.

ASP.NET MVC Evolution Table

Conclusion

This article helps to explain ASP.NET MVC and respective versions in Visual Studio.NET.