Upgrading to .Net 2.0

[Guest]

We currently have a project with approximately 150 pages written using VS2003
for .Net 1.1. We are about to buy VS2005 and our boss has asked us how long
would it take us to port this over to VS2005 and .Net 2.0. Can someone
provide me a rough estimate, based on their experience, as to how long
something like this would take? Are there any big things that will not move
to VS2005? We have used datagrids extensively. Is there any problem keeping
those intact? Thanks for any advice.

 

[Mark Rae]

We currently have a project with approximately 150 pages written using
VS2003
for .Net 1.1. We are about to buy VS2005 and our boss has asked us how
long
would it take us to port this over to VS2005 and .Net 2.0. Can someone
provide me a rough estimate, based on their experience, as to how long
something like this would take? Are there any big things that will not
move
to VS2005? We have used datagrids extensively. Is there any problem
keeping
those intact? Thanks for any advice.

Well, first things first - make sure you install SP1 for VS.NET 2005
otherwise you'll be stuck with the website model which, IMO, is awful... You
could just install WAP I suppose but, as that's now included in SP1, there's
no reason not to deploy SP1 anyway...

Once you've done this, I'd say there's a very good chance that your project
will upgrade pretty much seamlessly. You'd be well advised to look at what's
new in v2, though, e.g. generics and nullable datatypes (e.g. int?,
DateTime? etc). You need to read up on partial classes, as they're suddenly
going to appear everywhere in your code-behind...

As regards DataGrids, they're still supported in ASP.NET2 - however, the
GridView control is much more feature-rich, so it will be worth replacing
your DataGrids... Other new webcontrols include <asp:Menu> and
<asp:TreeView>... ASP.NET2 also introduces MasterPages...

In addition, lots of the Framework has been upgraded (as you might imagine)
e.g. System.Net.Mail instead of System.Web.Mail, though the older namespaces
are still supported...

There's a whole load of new stuff too e.g. native FTP support etc.