ASP.NET MVC models that can be validated without using attributes
I wholeheartedly agree that the attributes are evil.
But in my opinion having to derive from a base class is just as bad as having to add attributes. Both makes you depend on framework infrastructure you don't need to depend on. (Models should be model logic, and model logic only.)

In MVC (3 at least) you can implement a ModelValidatorProvider and a ModelMetadataProvider. The validator provider can be added in Application_Start using ModelValidatorProviders.Providers.Add(...), and the metdata provider can be injected using the standard IoC container.

The guys who wrote Professional ASP.NET MVC 3 also created fluent implementations of those, so you can have configuration like this:

validationProvider.ForModel&lt;PersonModel&gt;()
    .ForProperty(p =&gt; p.Name).Required()
    .ForProperty(p =&gt; p.Email).Required().Email();


This will also be picked up by the unobtrusive validation jQuery plugin, and everything else in MVC that would've used the attributes for.

As a sidenote, since you also derive from DynamicObject in your base class, the compiler won't complain if someone inadvertedly attempts to set person.name instead of person.Name.