StackOverflow2013

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copied!<p>We recently migrated a substantial ASP project to ASP.NET and it's definitely possible to do a migration that doesn't become a complete rewrite, preserving a susbstantial proportion of the original code (although we benefited from some fairly well architected code with good separation between the business logic and the presentation layers from the outset).</p> <p>We looked at two possible routes to the migration:</p> <ol> <li><p>A ground-up rewrite as a 'proper' ASP.NET application making the most of the built-in controls and shifting all of the business and data access layers into classes etc - ie the way we approach a new ASP.NET project.</p></li> <li><p>A more basic syntactic migration, taking the ASP pages and changing them over to ASP.NET without making too many up-front changes to the structure or logic. Then building on that as we continue to develop the site by making better use of ASP.NET controls, separate classes etc for new and revised functionality.</p></li> </ol> <p>Due to schedule pressures, we adopted the second route, allowing us to make the switch sooner rather than later and then take a longer-term view on more fundamental changes as part of future developments.</p> <p>On that basis, for the initial migration we were able to re-use the majority of the existing code, although this is gradually being replaced as we go forward. With an 'average' page having, say, 50-200 lines of HTML and 50-500 lines of VBScript code (as separate functions, not mixed into the HTML spaghetti-style), we found it took about an hour per page to migrate them, including changing all of the ADO data access to a new ADO.NET data access layer. Some simple pages took just a few minutes - some of the more complex pages took a whole day - but about an hour a page was the overall figure across hundreds of pages, with the time to change the data access representing a significant part of the effort.</p> <p>If we were to redo the migration today, we'd use ASP.NET MVC rather than web forms as it maps better to the way that the original pages were written - although I couldn't comment on whether or not a migration to MVC would take more or less time.</p> <p>This doesn't necessarily have any bearing on whether or not you want to move to a free platform or change languages - you might have other reasons for wanting to do this. (Our client was Windows based so moving to ASP.NET, development time aside, carried no additional costs.) However, I can say that it's possible to migrate a substantial ASP site to ASP.NET without a complete rewrite - and it's equally possible to migrate from earlier versions of ASP.NET to more recent versions with minimal work. Obviously the route that we chose, preserving some of the ASP feel to the code rather than opting for a complete redevelopment, might not suit everyone - but it does give you a low impact entry point into ASP.NET that then allows you to build on that groundwork while making the most of your existing codebase and skills.</p>

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