I'm trying to add a contribution to the discussion. Generally, the dependencies structure you presented allows for the model (and in some sens the view) to be completely independent from the information flow. In other words, if the application is statefull and it is also accessed by different points (i.e. different users, different kind of clients, different roles, ...), it is fundamental to have a back-notification system, handled by the controller but trigered by the model. PHP applications are normally stateless or "fairly statefull" (using sessions or filesystem) and generally they are accessed by only one way. In this case the flow is invoked by the HTTP REQUEST and normally both model modification and view notification are handled in the same REQUEST. That's why you are itched with unifying all messages into the controller. That's what I figure out. The question now is: which approach is the best for PHP / WEB based applications ? I think that no pattern has a universal implementation but it has still to deal with the environment / instruments used. MV