How to migrate a 3rd party web part from SharePoint 2 (2003) to SharePoint 3 (2007)

Question

I am migrating a site from SharePoint 2 to 3 (in fact, from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007). There are a handful of 3rd party web parts and since this is a migration, not an in-place upgrade, I need to install these web parts on the new farm.

How do I do this, given that I have the packaged up web parts as provided by the SharePoint Configuration Analyzer in the form of cab files? Can I simply deploy these cab files somehow, even though they are not packaged as solutions? Or do I need to pull the cab files apart and repackage them as solutions? Or do I need to get new versions of the web parts, written for SharePoint 3, and maybe edit the pages that use them?

Answer 1

You should be able to pull them apart and either repackage them as solutions or manually deploy them. Obviously, if they are real complicated webparts that have other dependencies, this might become more difficult.

Answer 2

You can still install .CAB files with WSSv3 using the same STSADM command as you used in WSSv2

STSADM -o addwppack -filename <filename.CAB>

However, maybe you should get in touch with the providers of these 3rd party web parts? Perhaps they will have versions for WSSv3 packaged as WSP's?

Also can you be sure that the WSSv2 versions will actually work on WSSv3? They often do, but not always.