Recomendations regarding starting a new asp.net 1.1 project now. (ASP.NET 2.0)

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Hi!

We have decided to use ASP.NET 1.1 for our next web solution but we have
some concerns wich we hope you can give us an opinion on.

1. Is there anyway we can "prepare" our applicatioon to ASP.NET 2.0? (Should
we?)

2. We see master pages integreated in the framwwork as the way to go, but
how do we deal with that in the year 2003? Are there good alternatives wich
is used already today (wich?) ? If yes, will the in the futere be
"convertable" to master pages / clint pages in ASP.NET 2.0?

3. We are J2EE developers wich is exploring the possiblities in .Net and has
taking this asp.net project for learning and judging. We are _very_ fond of
Hibernate for Java so what has .net to offer if we don't wanna use the
dataset. Said more clearly. What O/R frameworks excist wich is ready for
production use? Eg. Hibernate for .net is interesting but not ....there yet.

4. Hornestly. Is components like the datagrid (at least as it stands in
asp.net 1.1) _really_ configureable enough for real world data
presentation/editing? Our guess is, after experimenting a _little_., no. We
guess that you very quickly work "against" the controls (eg datagrid) and
are twisting/hacking it to do what you really want instead of writing clean
and maintainable/expandable code. What is your opinion/experince on this
matter.

Thanks in advance!
Regards
Anders Jacobsen, Denmark

 

[William F. Robertson, Jr.]

Comments inline.

Good luck!

bill

Hi!

We have decided to use ASP.NET 1.1 for our next web solution but we have
some concerns wich we hope you can give us an opinion on.

1. Is there anyway we can "prepare" our applicatioon to ASP.NET 2.0? (Should
we?)

I believe ASP.net 2.0 is completely backward compatible. The only
preperation I would suggest is any features you want to use in 2.0, seperate
them in to a different logical component, that way you can just upgrade that
piece to use the newer, better, faster, etc, features of 2.0.

2. We see master pages integreated in the framwwork as the way to go, but
how do we deal with that in the year 2003? Are there good alternatives wich
is used already today (wich?) ? If yes, will the in the futere be
"convertable" to master pages / clint pages in ASP.NET 2.0?

I like the future that master pages will allow, but for now we create user
controls ( one for the header and footer ) and place them at the top of
everypage. It was manual process for a while, then I discovered how to
create template pages when adding a new page to the solution. It saved a
lot of the manual process.

I would think if your pages are somewhat consitent as far as layout, it
wouldn't be too difficult to convert to master pages. I am sure you have
used the code comment <!-- replace when I come up with something else -->
If ease of conversion is that important to you you can either use
UserControls and replace them when the time comes, or comment block your
code. Then write a Macro to convert.
<!-- b:mp -->
tags that will be replaced with master page.
<!-- /b:mp -->

But that might be too manual of a process. (I know it is for me)

3. We are J2EE developers wich is exploring the possiblities in .Net and has
taking this asp.net project for learning and judging. We are _very_ fond of
Hibernate for Java so what has .net to offer if we don't wanna use the
dataset. Said more clearly. What O/R frameworks excist wich is ready for
production use? Eg. Hibernate for .net is interesting but not ....there

yet.

Hmmm, I haven't had any problems with DataSets so I haven't explored other
options. I am a big fan of the strongly typed DataSet, so I am biased. Oh
and defining relations, updating whole DataSet, concurrency violations, etc.
The only complaint I have for the DataSet is the serialization footprint is
huge. I read is MSDN they are vastly improving the serialization for 2.0.

4. Hornestly. Is components like the datagrid (at least as it stands in
asp.net 1.1) _really_ configureable enough for real world data
presentation/editing? Our guess is, after experimenting a _little_., no. We
guess that you very quickly work "against" the controls (eg datagrid) and
are twisting/hacking it to do what you really want instead of writing clean
and maintainable/expandable code. What is your opinion/experince on this
matter.

The DataGrid, as it currently exists, will provide a functional real world
presentation/editting, but rather than figure out how exactly to get the
DataGrid to behave the way I wanted it to, my group wrote our own. (Another
plus of .NET). We have it behaving exactly as we want, with minimal
intervention on my developer's part. It took some time, but full
customization of controls it nice.

In all honesty, I gave up using the DataGrid beyond, "Let me dump this
record set to the screen in a hurry." Now I have been reading about the
DataView ( I think that is what it is called ) for 2.0 and it seems to be
much better, much more powerful control.

If you have the time I would definitely invest in some custom WebControl
experimentation. You can also download the .Net Reflector.
http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ I used to use this regular for
determine how exactly MS rendered out their custom controls.

Anyone that says MS is crushing the open source initiative is full of bunk.
They have open sourced their Framework assemblies! I don't want them open
sourcing their OS code. It has enough security problems with it (as all
OSes do). If they open sourced their OS code, every wanna be hacker would
be looking to exploit every single buffer allocation to their advantage, and
then I would have to download my updates daily as opposed to weekly.