How to best prepare for asp.net 2.0 release in advance?

[Steve Franks]

Hi all,

I've spent the past several months developing my ASP.NET 2.0 web site using
Beta 2, and its working great.

Even though 2.0 beta 2 has a Go Live license, I have not deployed to
production yet. It is a brand new web site so I want to wait and just
deploy with the final release of 2.0 now that it is coming in just a couple
weeks.

However it is critical that I go live with the new site as soon as 2.0 is
released as I'd like to prepare as much as possible for the released version
in advance. Here are questions I am hoping will help me prepare better:

1) Will there be changes required to the structure/architecture of code
behind pages created in Beta 2? I seem to recall reading something about
needing to redo code behind pages to fit into some new format. Is this the
case, and if so where can I learn more about it? Will a conversion wizard
take care of this or will I need to do this by hand? I read through this
article here
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/be...s/default.aspx but it
didn't say anything about changes to code behind other than it moving
classes to a special folder.

2) Does anyone know if the final shipping version will be identical to the
Release Candiate (is the RC release the same as RTM), or whether there have
been any changes made between the RC and final builds?

3) Will Universal MSDN subscribers have access to the final shipping version
any point before release on Nov 7, even if they cannot go live with it?
Again I want to get everything on the server and set up so that as soon as
we are permited to go live I can make the site publicly accessible and "go
live".

4) Besides what is listed in this article
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/be...s/default.aspx are
there any other considerations or "gotchas" I should watch out for?

5) Do you think we will be able to safely and clearly remove the RC build
and install the final build when available? I'm hesitant to install RC
because I dread the thought that somehow I could wind up needed to rebuild
my box in order to run the final version.

Thanks!

Steve

[Scott Allen]

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 22:29:00 -0400, "Steve Franks"
<pl****@postrep lyhere.com> wrote:

Thank you Scott. This was a very helpful overview.

Yes I have both Virtual PC 2004 and Virtual Server 2005. Do you know of any
advantages of using one vs. the other? Since Virtual Server 2005 is newer
I'm inclined to then think it is more powerful, modern, and has more
options. Yet I'm also wondering if it will have drawback considering my
needs are pretty basic and just want to use it for dev/testing and easily
have environments I can roll forward.

Hey Steve:

The two products have a different feature set. I'm not sure one is
more powerful than the other, rather they are intended to be used
differently. VPC is more 'interactive', while Virtual Server is
intended to spin up a machine and run it unattended for weeks and
months at a time.

Here is an excerpt from
http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/arc...al_Server.aspx
:

Virtual PC
- Rich GUI client for local interactive use.
- Low security/High interactivity (Shared Folders, Drag/Drop,
Cut/Paste).
- No Automation/Scripting Interface.
- Client-oriented features (Sound Card in VM).
- All Guests use one CPU on the host.

Virtual Server
- Thin web-based admin and VMRC client for remote/headless
administrative use.
- High security/Low interactivity (nothing "shared" between Guests and
Host).
- Full Automation/Scripting Interface with COM.
- Server-oriented features (Virtual SCSI emulation, per VM CPU
throttling, VS Security model for delegation. But no Sounc Card).
- Guests use all CPUs on the host, but each Guest still sees and uses
only one CPU.

The file formats are compatible, so you can always try out both.

--
Scott
http://www.OdeToCode.com/blogs/scott/