Coding Day

Although Visual Studio 2005 includes a conversion wizard for old projects, this does not work properly with web applications, because Microsoft removed support for web applications at the beginning. We don’t have a web project, we have a web site. The wizard tries to convert all the files to the new framework. This fails at first compilation, so many errors reported and I don’t want to fix all of these errors, since there exist an easier solution.

ASP.NET team stepped back and gave support for web projects through an add-in for Visual Studio 2005. Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects is the easiest way to migrate from ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0. Because we are able to open our project file, visual studio converts only the project file. So all the files in ASP.NET 1.1 stays and only the project file changes. This is also useful because my code under source control doesn’t have to change.

However in Windows Vista, you don’t have the administrator rights by default and the installation of WAP fails. The solution to that problem is already defined here. The process is simply to write a bat file and run the bat file with administrator rights.

msiexec /i WebApplicationProjectSetup.msi

I am a bit surprised when running ASP.NET 1.1 application on IIS7.  You don’t have to install .Net framework 1.1. I also suspected that if .Net 1.1 comes pre-installed, but my GAC (Global Assembly Cache) have only 2.0 libraries.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, according to IIS team this is because of the backward compatibility, but it might not be guaranteed. So if you happen to run your application (like me ) it is because of the backward compatibility of ASP.NET. At the end the application runs on ASP.NET 2.0 worker process.

C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC> gacutil /l System.Data
Microsoft (R) .NET Global Assembly Cache Utility.  Version 2.0.50727.42
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

The Global Assembly Cache contains the following assemblies:
  System.Data, Version= 2.0.0.0, Culture= neutral, PublicKeyToken= b77a5c561934e089
, processorArchitecture=x86

Number of items = 1

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC>

Running Web Application

 All the code without change can work on IIS7. You can migrate your code to ASP.NET 2.0 but this is not a necessity. With a little configuration on IIS server you will be able to run your 1.1 compiled applications.

• After you open the IIS Manager (still inetmgr.exe), you either “Add Application” or  ”Convert to Application” to create your web application. With “Add Application” you will be able to choose any directory in your computer, but with “Convert to Application” you will only be able to choose from the virtual directories which is located under inetpub\wwwroot.

• We see “Add Application” dialog box opened. From there we select Application Pool to change DefaultAppPool.

• We select Classic .Net AppPool from the “Select Application Pool” dialog.

• Then we’re ready to go after setting the application pool to Classic .Net AppPool

• When we click browse, or look directly to the virtual directory, our site is up and running

Debugging

One more thing,  to debug your application you need to switch the application to windows authentication mode. This has also been changed in IIS7.

• In IIS Manager select from left, the web application virtual directory, then from right select authentication under IIS section.

• Then enable windows authentication to be able to debug your application.

Today Scott Guthrie has annonced the Atlas Roadmap. The good news is Microsoft will give full support to Atlas  since they are planning to ship by the end of the year. The bad news is the cool atlas name goes.

• Atlas (Client Side) -> Microsoft Ajax Library
• Atlas (Server Side) -> ASP.NET 2.0 Ajax Extensions
• Atlas Control Toolkit -> ASP.NET Control Toolkit

Anyway more meaningful names as well. I am also surprised that they have split the client side and server side products.