Compelling Reasons to Migrate from ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 3.5

Question

Forgive me if this is a repeat question. I've searched StackOverflow and did not find the answer to my question, so here goes.

We currently have a web application running ASP.NET 2.0 with AJAX Extensions 1.0 and SQL Server 2005 running, is deployed on IIS 6 and developing in VS2005. All works great, but I'm trying to find compelling reasons to migrate. The clients we serve to do not permit plugins in general in browsers, so Silverlight is not a reason for us to migrate. Also, we don't have any plans to migrate to SQL Server 2008 any time soon and ASP.NET MVC is not in the works either.

Here's my reasons to migrate. I would like people to comment on them or add to the list:

• I want to work with the newer .NET stuff (and I think other developers would too. Also appealing to prospective employees)
• Want to keep the technology up to date.
• Extension methods
• PageMethods in WebControls
• WCF
• LINQ maybe (we currently use AutoSproc for our DAL)
• ASP.NET AJAX built-in to ASP.NET 3.5 (not really a big deal though)
• VS.NET 2008 JavaScript Intellisense

Answer 1

Everything still runs on .NET 2.0, it's just library and language enhancements and an improved IDE experience, which are made to increase productivity. Increased productivity = justification.

I use LINQ all the time now, every single day. It's not just for your DAL. It's about querying anything, with the same API over top. More generally, lamba expressions provide you with the ability to do some things that are very complicated and take a lot more code without them. Anonymous types are very useful as well.

Answer 2

The free Microsoft ASP.net Chart control and the new version of Ajax tool kit both require 3.5. If i'm not mistaken.

Answer 3

The javascript intellisense is a huge improvement over anything that's come before. But at the same time it still fails in some very spectacular ways. All in all a good step but not something I've been able to use as much as I'd like.

The extension methods and linq (linq to objects and lambdas, not just linq to sql) are very cool, but since you have an orm already set up you won't use them as much as you'd like either.

WCF is okay, but you're probably not going to re-write your existing services for it.

I think the biggest reason up there is keeping your employees happy and attracting good new ones.

Answer 4

LINQ is a reason to upgrade, even if you don't swap out your DAL, or don't do it for a while. In the product I've been working on lately, our development schedule is such that there's no room to change our DAL to a LINQ-based one for a while yet, but even so I find good reasons to use LINQ-to-Objects and/or LINQ-to-XML in probably 60% of the classes I touch, and I love it.

Answer 5

All the points mentioned are valid.

But as a developer, when facing this kind of question, I always ask myself from the other side.

What is Compelling Reasons NOT to Migrate from ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 3.5? I find it easier to get myself motivated to upgrade.

Answer 6

You have absolutely no reason to upgrade, from a business prospective.

You have absolutely every reason to upgrade, from a developer prospective.

Just keep in mind that SQL 2008 is not backwards compatible with SQL 2005, meaning, if you develop something in SQL 2008, chances are, your 2005 platform will barf at it. I just recently experienced this with SSIS packages.

Answer 7

My favorite parts are:

• Lambda expressions
• Functions available in the System.Data.Linq namespace: Where(...), OrderBy(...), ForEach(...)
• Extension methods (add a "ToDelimitedString(...)" to all IEnumerable!)
• Visual Studio 2008 is nicer with HTML/web syntax and debugging, including the aforementioned Javascript intellisense and debugging.

Each of these allow you to write code in a more productive manner.
It largely eliminates the boilerplate "foreach", "if x != null", and other boring constructs.