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MVC implies that the server handles much of the view - with a GWT application the server is reduced to a glorified DAO. All you really need is integrate services from the backend into the frontend. What we really missing is something like RMI for the browser - GWT's RPC is as good as it gests for this purpose and and libraries like the GWT-SL allow you to directly publish Spring managed POJOs as services over RPC into the client.

First, though, I think you shouldn't call it MVP. In my opinion it seems that what you're doing is MVC where the model is helped out by RPC. There is already so much variety in the meanings of this (MVP, MVC, etc...), especially with Activities and Request Factory coming into the picture that terminology is becoming important. Not because I don't know what you're describing, but because someone new to the frameworks will get thoroughly confused.

For your convenience, here is the net of it. With MVC, the model is thick with business rules and glue code to a data access layer. The view has lots of dependencies on the model. The controller is usually a framework component driven by some kind of configuration, usually XML based. With MVP, the model is lightweight POJOs. The view is mockable. It is the presenter that is heavy with glue code and business rules. The thinking here is that MVP is more suited for TDD than MVC. Another notable feature of MVP in GWT apps is the use of an event bus instead of hard coded event handler dependencies. Typically, that event bus is implemented as either the HandlerManager from GWT itself or the PropertyChangeSupport class from the GWTx library.

originally the MVP pattern was design for separating the view from its logic and the model it is displaying (as the MVC). Since the arriving of UIBinder I found the word View misused. Actually, strictly speaking the View is contained in the ui.xml file and the "Controller" is the corresponding java file which is implementing the corresponding logic and instanciation. This file merely represents a kind of Controller. The Presenter used in this tutorial is (for me) nothing more than a ControllerProvider which enable the ability to provide differents implementations of the view logic. What I'm founding strange is the fact that their are using the same acronym (MVP) for two differents approaches :  - first one was Presenter centered as the abstraction was done on Display and aggregation were done against the presenter  - second one was Display AND Presenter centered as the abstraction is done on Presenter and Display the both referencing each other. But this approach is mainly due to the fact that UIBinder is removing a lot of boiler plate code from event handling (and first MVP tutorial was not using it), but in the same way UIBinder tends people to adapt the original MVP pattern to be able to use all its power ! That why there is so much reflexion to mix UIBinder and MVP together.

The main issue in MVC is that these three elements are tighly bound together: the controller has to register to both the model and the view (and unregister if either changes), and when a view serves multiple controllers or a controller uses multiple models, that becomes quickly a mess.

MVP approach is more message-oriented. All messages (events) are fired on a single EventBus that is shared by all Presenters. Each presenter listens to events of interest, and fires new events according to actions. So a change in the in the EmployeeModel may be fired with an EmployeeModelChangedEvent, instead of attaching a listener to the model object. And we can easily create new Presenters that receive that same event and react accordingly.

The magnitude of such a shift is great: the model is no more the center and source of events (which would require special care in attaching and detaching to a specific instance), but it more a passive container of data, which may be copied, proxied, transformed, cached, without the GWT appliction any special care.Since the model is more a container of data ment for communication, I've highlighted the fact that it needs to be Serializable.