Migrating ASP Programming to ASP.NET

Although the designers of Microsoft® ASP.NET have done an excellent job in preserving backward compatibility with ASP applications, there are a few key items you need to be aware of before undertaking the effort of moving a Web application from ASP to ASP.NET. A solid understanding of the technologies that have changed or been introduced with the .NET platform and ASP.NET will go a long way in making this process a whole lot easier.

Migrating your application to ASP.NET may not be easy; however, it should not be that difficult either. ASP.NET is very much compatible with ASP. This is impressive given the fact that ASP.NET is a complete overhaul of ASP.

The designers of ASP.NET had an initial goal of being 100 percent backwards compatible with ASP but subsequently had to back off this goal in favor of improving the platform for the long haul. Not to worry—the changes made were for the better and should not require a lot of work on your part to implement. The actual changes made can be categorized into the following sections:

Core API changes
Structural changes
Visual Basic language changes
COM-related changes
Application configuration changes
State management issues
Security-related changes
Data access