Web Site Upgrade from ASP .NET 2.0 to 3.5

Question

We have a web application that runs on IIS using .NET 2.0 developed and built with Visual Studio 2005.

We're going to upgrade to .NET 3.5 and begin using Visual Studio 2008. Here are my questions:

1. I note the runtime is still 2.0-based.

When I loaded the solution in Visual Studio 2008, I was asked to convert, and I did. I then checked the target framework for the default project, and it was set to 3.5. However, all of the other target frameworks for the other projects are set to 2.0.

Do I need to manually set the target frameworks from 2.0 to 3.5 for each of the projects in the solution?

1. Are there any "gotcha's" anyone can think of to be concerned with a web-application conversion?

As I understand it, the 1.1 to 2.0 migration was a much more difficult issue due to the massive runtime and web-page design changes. However, 2.0 to 3.5 isn't such a big change.

I was not at my current job for that upgrade, but I understand there was a problem with some textarea tags using a deprecated attribute that failed to function correctly after the upgrade.

Can anyone think of any similar issues I might encounter?

1. Any other issues or thoughts anyone has after having done such a conversion themselves?

Thanks, I appreciate the input.

---Dan---

Answer 1

Do I need to manually set the target frameworks from 2.0 to 3.5 for each of the projects in the solution?

Not necessary, but I would recommend you to do so. Visual Studio actually filters the assemblies you can reference based on the target framework version.

Are there any "gotcha's" anyone can think of to be concerned with a web-application conversion?

Not any that I am aware of when migrating from 2.0 to 3.5. You don't even need to modify the CLR version of the host application pool. When you need to migrate to 4.0 there might be more issues.

Answer 2

If you're also upgrading your own target server, from my own experiences, be patient with the installer.

It does quite a lot including uninstalling the existing .NET 2.0 and 3.0 frameworks and replacing it pretty much wholesale.

It can look as if the installer is stuck. On one of our production servers it ran for nearly 20 minutes. I was almost ready to pull the plug then it magically jumped into life.