ViewModels

Feature	In DXA	DD4T .NET	DD4T Java	Comments
Features of the models
Attribute-driven	Yes	Yes	Yes	Both attributes will be backwards compatible, but will choose one preferred one for future usage, try to consolidate/minimise use of attribute. Metadata could be separate property, but does not have to be
Support for strongly typed page models	Yes	Yes	Partial
Support for page regions	Yes (in generic pages)	Yes (in custom page models)		Regions in DXA are created in the generic page to group CPs, in DD4T there are attributes to let you model this on the page
Link and rich text resolving	Yes	Yes
Multiple attributes on a property	Yes	No
Search in a tree structure	Yes	No		Good feature, but it must be made optional
Schema.org support	Yes	No
Multiple schemas per viewmodel	Yes	No
Multiple viewmodels per schema	Yes?	Yes
Extensible attributes	No	Yes		Cleanup necessary
Lazy properties?	No	No		Especially in combination with ExternalContentProviders
Features of the model builder
Uses reflection only once	No	Yes		DD4T reads all model information only once (using reflection), and uses it many times
Independent from MVC	Not sure?	Yes		It must be possible to use the ViewModels outside the context of MVC to facilitate testing etc
Injecting ExternalContentProviders	No	No
Single-step approach (from json to strongly typed object)	No	Java only		Need to test to see if this is important enough
Inject viewmodels using ModelBinder	No	Yes (in feature branch)		Multiple ModelBinders to support various ViewModel implementations
Support for older viewmodel architectures (DXA and DD4T)	No	No		Important to offer an upgrade path for all customers!