ASP to ASP.NET Migration

Migration from ASP to ASP.NET can drastically improve the performance of your applications.

A software created using ASP.NET is more robust, scalable, reliable, and secure as compared

to the software created using ASP. ASP.NET, which is a new version of ASP, removes all the

shortcomings of ASP. For example, it removes tier confusion from the code (by providing an easy

way to separate presentation layer, business logic layer; and database layer), It allows code

compilation instead of code interpretation, and provides CLR (Common Language Runtime) for

built in garbage collection to avoid memory leaks.

ASP.NET, which uses .NET Framework, enables you to build globally distributed applications with

Internet functionality and interoperability built into them. ASP.NET enables you to build

platform independent software that can be easily integrated with any application developed on

any platform and language that supports CLR. The .NET platforms now support approximately

25.NET compatible languages as compared to ASP, which can support only two scripting

languages such as VB Script and JavaScript.

ASP to ASP.NET migration can open a whole new world of possibilities for your web-based

applications. For example, you can make use of already existing XML web services in your code

to add a new feature or functionality to your code. XML Web services can be utility programs

created by any developer and can be made available through Internet world wide without

worrying about the operating system and programming language used to create them. Consider a

situation where you want to validate the credit card number of your online customers on your

website. Instead of writing the code to validate the credit card numbers of the customers

yourself, you can simply plug in the already available Web service providing credit card

validation in your code.

In addition, the ASP.NET migration can make the code of your application considerably small,

easily manageable, and easily deployable. This white paper discusses the benefits that you may

get, after the migration of your application from ASP to ASP.NET with the help of Hanu Software.

It provides all the valuable information in understanding the important aspects of migration from

ASP to ASP.NET and provides a clear insight into the b?enefits of proposed migration. This paper

enables you to understand the complexities in migration and how Hanu Software enables a

smooth .NET migration of your ASP code by providing you the best .NET migration solution.

Further this paper discusses about the facts that you must consider before going for a migration

and various migration strategies that Hanu Software offers.

Benefits of ASP to ASP.NET Migration

Microsoft's .NET Framework is rapidly gaining momentum as a standard for business systems,

both within an organization and for the external clients of an organization. The advantages of

migration of your existing applications to ASP.NET are enormous and disadvantages are none.

This is because all the features of asp are available in ASP.NET. Installing ASP.NET does not break

your existing ASP applications. ASP.NET uses a separate file name extension (.aspx instead of

.asp), separate configuration settings, and an entirely separate runtime technology. With an ASP

application entire web server may go down if one application crashes but ASP.NET processes run

in a different server space and in separate application domain. This saves entire web server to

crash just because of one application. If ASP and ASP.NET are installed on the same computer,

ASP pages and applications can continue to use the existing ASP engine, with no interference

from ASP.NET.

Some other benefits of ASP to ASP.NET Migration are:

Better Language Support: ASP.NET is platform independent technology and supports 25 .NET

languages such as C#, VB.NET, and JavaScript. .NET Developers can visually create Web pages

with the use of VB style drag drop feature in Visual Studio.NET IDE. They can use built in

debugging, testing and deployment features of .NET platform for easy manageability of code. In

addition developers can use over 4500 .NET framework classes that provides a number of

controls for performance monitoring, logging, file upload, image generation, XML processing,

data access, transactions, regular expressions, message queuing, SMTP mail and much more.

Event-Driven Programming: ASP .NET is an object oriented technology that supports event

driven programming unlike ASP. Objects on a Web page can expose events that can be processed

by ASP .NET code. Load, Click and Change events handled by code makes coding much simpler

and better organized.

Improved Scalability: ASP.NET has removed the bottlenecks created by ASP sessions, which

used to work well only on the server where they were created. They used to store the session

data "in-process" on the web server, which was a cause of scalability bottlenecks on high-volume

sites. ASP.NET stores session's data on a dedicated state server that can be easily shared by

multiple web servers and on an SQL Server database too, providing a better scalability and

availability of sessions. This has improved the server to server communication, making it possible

to scale an application over several servers. One example of this is the ability to run XML

parsers, XSL transformations and even resource hungry session objects on other servers.

Migrating Existing Applications to ASP.NET

Although migration of your existing applications to ASP.Net can be very beneficial, sometimes

people are reluctant to make this transition. This may be due to many reasons. One of ASP's

great assets is that it allows you to use a very simple scripting language, which is not the case

with .NET platform. .NET uses modern, full-featured programming languages. ASP.NET therefore

places much greater demands on web developers, compared to those placed on conventional

software developers.

In ASP, executing the principles of good design is extremely difficult. ASP applications are

complex and difficult to maintain, with very low code re-use. On the other hand with .NET there

is an opportunity to produce better-designed applications, with resulting benefits in sustaining

the quality.

However these design skills are new demands on ASP programmers, and have a long and steep

learning curve. While it is very much possible to write ASP.NET applications in the ASP style, this

will reverse many of the advantages of .NET technology.

Developers who have not come from a traditional software development background may require

more extensive training to adapt to the new concepts. Even experienced software developers

may not have fully used object orientated features previously. There could be performance

scaling down and productivity decline while developers get accustomed to .NET.

Facts that you Need to Consider before Migration

Before you go for a migration you must determine the benefits that you expect from the

migration and the time that you can afford to spare for the migration process. You must also

understand the complexity of migration in your application. If you have a big application with

number of modules, the quality of the code, the use of COM components, and the distribution of

data access functions in the code are few important factors that must be considered before you

go for migration.

The greatest difficulty in all programming is good design. If your code has a good design and the

multi-tiered separation exists in your application code then the migration process can be smooth

else the migration process will be complex and would require a huge amount of effort. A good

code design implies that the presentation layer is separated from the business components

layers and data access functions reside centrally in data tier

Migration Life Cycle

We believe that no tool available till date is capable of providing a smooth and complte

migration process. The tools can be used for basic migration but advanced migration

requirements of the code can only be fulfilled using manual intervention in code. Though Hanu

Software uses 'ASP to ASP.NET' migration tool for basic migration of code from ASP to ASP.NET but

actual migration is done by our core development team.

At Hanu Software, we follow a complete life cycle of ASP to ASP.NET migration to provide best

migration results to our customers. The complete migration lifecycle at Hanu Software consists

of four main stages.

Analysis: At this stage, we analyze the existing code, and create a migration strategy. We

consider the scope of migration, the processes required for migration such as code modification

and testing plans. At this stage we also identify the .NET specific functionality that can be added

to the application or can be replaced with ASP.NET functionality.

Conversion: At this stage, we perform the actual code conversion. We start developing and

modifying modules for migration. At this stage we perform unit testing and peer reviews for the

converted code.

Re-factoring - At this stage, we perform code optimization and design improvement. This stage

can actually enables you to get long terms gains from the migration and can be helpful in

drastically improving the performance of the application.

Testing: At this stage we conduct functional and non-functional testing for the modules that

have been successfully migrated.

The complete life cycle of the migration process ensures a smooth migration of your system from

ASP to ASP.NET