What is the best process for a new ASP.NET web app from the ground up?

Question

I am re-building our poorly designed web application from scratch, and wanted to get into TDD and basically "do things right" as kind of a learning project. What tools, processes, and resources are recommended to do it "right" from the start? I will be working alone as the architect and developer, with the backup of a business analyst and business owners for usability testing and use cases.

EDIT: Right now we use SourceSafe for source control, is there any reason technologically that I'd want to try to get us to switch to subversion?

EDIT #2: Looks like the consensus is: Cruise Control.NET Subversion(if I want to stop using SourceSafe) ASP.NET MVC NUnit for unit testing Resharper

Answer 1

I highly recommend that you take a look at MVC for ASP.NET if you want to make unit testing a high priority in your development process. It sounds like it is perfect for what you are trying to do.

I would also recommend CruiseControl.NET for continuous integration (this is important if your team is going to grow).

Subversion is my favorite source control system when I am working on small teams. Use Tortoise SVN for Windows Explorer integration.

Answer 2

We are using a setup with Visual Studio 2008, Resharper 4.1, Subversion for sourcecontrol, Cruise control for automated builds and the build in unit testing for all our automated tests. and Linq2Sql for or mapping. You could swap out anything but VS (obviously) and resharper (it's so cool) but you could easily use another sourcecontrol, or mapper or unit testing tool.

Answer 3

Here are some tools that can make it easier and safer to work (Googling the names will bring up the relevant pages):

Subversion - Source control
NUnit - Testing framework
CruiseControl.Net - Automated builds

Answer 4

Visual Source safe has a strict locking policy so that only one person can work on a file at a time....CVS or subversion allows multiple users to work on the same file at the same time.

Answer 5

All of the suggestions here are good, but there is no magic bullet. You'll have to look at how big your app is, how many users, how is it deployed, etc. to make your architectural, process, tool set, and other decisions. TDD, for instance, is a good methodology, but not the only good methodology for "doing things right". Another one, CruiseControl is awesome, but in a single developer project, it is probably overkill.

Be consistent in whatever you do is my best suggestion - if you go with TDD, GO WITH TDD if you know what I mean.

Answer 6

An answer to your source control question...

Redesigning an app from the ground up will probably be a time-consuming project, I wouldn't waste time changing source control unless you already know exactly which one you will use and have experience setting it up.

Visual SourceSafe gets the job done, especially in a 1 person effort, and its already in place so run with it.

Answer 7

If you are just starting out then I would change as little as possible (especially since you are the only developer), so stick with Sourcesafe. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it in your situation.

Later down the line, you might look towards the MS Team System, or perhaps go for other 3rd Party tools.

Personally I'm not a fan of Subversion, but I recognise that it's a popular tool across the industry.

As for TDD-specific software, I can't offer any advice. Do you have preferred tools for UML or whatever formal methods you are using?

Answer 8

One thing to mention: Be a 100% sure that you understand what the program's doing and what's it supposed to do, before doing any changes. A 'bad' softwer often turns out to be 'not that bad' after understanding the whole situation.

Sourcesafe can be ok, especially for one person, but when there'll be more and more ppl on the team, the lock model can get annoying, but for the time of being: stick with it

Answer 9

We re-wrote our website like you're doing and we are using C# with MVC. Its great. We use Microsoft's SourceSafe to control our code and it works awesome. Since you are the only developer it will depend on what you like.

Microsoft's sourcesafe allows us to create a branch that we can work off can keep under source control, and we can switch between both easily. (I really haven't used subversion to much so I can't comment on it.)

We use NUnit to test/ mock out our code. It super easy to mock them out. We created a class that will save and read the objects.

The save function: Stream stream = File.Open(simplePath, FileMode.OpenOrCreate); BinaryFormatter bwriter = new BinaryFormatter(); bwriter.Serialize(stream, actual);

The read function: Stream stream = File.Open(simplePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read); BinaryFormatter bwriter = new BinaryFormatter(); object returnObject = bwriter.Deserialize(stream);

We've used NUnit to mock out xml and SQL.

Good luck

Answer 10

If you're about to set up a fresh instance of subversion and continuous integration, starting green from a VSS background, these two free packages will likely save you days (or weeks) of time:

• Visual SVN Server Sets up everything needed for a subversion server, including Windows AD auth and an admin GUI. Free, you may consider supporting their excellent VisualSVN VS addin for source control integration in Visual Studio. Alternatively, can look at AnkhSVN

• TeamCity A Continuous Integration package (alternative to CruiseControl.NET) from JetBrains (makers of ReSharper, a fantastic tool, as mentioned) which is free for the professional version (up to 20 users and 3 build servers).

These two packages are some of the easiest installs around, challenging VSS itself :-)

Using SVN may take a little adjustment; but with the excellent doco for whichever client you pick (AnkSVN, VisualSVN, TortoiseSVN, or some combination), you'll be fine.

Besides, you know where to find people eager to answer any questions you might have in exchange for Rep ;-)

Answer 11

Check out TypeMock or Rhino Mocks. Mocking can save you so much time and pain when you're unit testing a web application.