Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm is an intuitive and widely accepted strategy in UI design, be it web or rich client. In fact it is so well established as a de-facto standard, that "compliance ...

Idea #2: Smart controller, dumb model -- Minimalist, data holding Model. Business logic and data validation is done by the controller.

MVC (model-view-controller) is a paradigm intended to partition the functionality of a desktop or web application cleanly. The model manages the underlying data structure.