Compabibility of Visual Studio 2003 with applications in prev versions

[SJTech]

We currently develop in Visual Studio 2002 (mainly VB and C#) under .NET framework 1.0

We are looking at whether to upgrade our development platform to Visual Studio 2003 and .NET 1.1.

Are there any resources or white papers which dicuss the implications of such a move and the compatibilities of applications written in previous versions especially supportablility of those projects once we have upgraded.



Gary
Cas-Sim Webmaster

http://www.cas-sim.org

 

[DotNetDoc]

Nothing was taken away in the upgrade. It is more of a enhancement/Bugfix type upgrade. There are a few new tools and wizzards and you also have the capability to write programs for the pocket PC.

When you install 2003 it is installed side by side with 2002.

We have upgraded all of our .Net programs to 2003 without a hitch. The only thing we needed to change was in reference to ODBC. The odbc driver used to be in Microsoft.Data.ODBC and now resides in System.Data.ODBC.
So since we use it to connect to some mySQL DB's we needed to do a few search and replace functions. But that was it.

The new version (Comming out in 2005 sometime - Code Named Whidbey) is quite a bit different. They have quite a few enhancements / IDE Changes in that.

DotNetDoc
M.C.S.D.
---------------------------------------

Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.
- Anonymous Chinese Proverb

-----------------------------------

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
- A. Einstein

 

[SJTech]

Thank you for your answer.

Can you just confirm then that if we upgrade to 2003 and still have applications written in 2002 then we would be advised to keep a copy of 2002 for maintenance until all apps are upgraded.



Gary
Cas-Sim Webmaster

http://www.cas-sim.org

 

[DotNetDoc]

You can do that but upgrading applications from 2002 to 2003 is easy.

Make a backup copy of your 2002 projects (Always the safe way to go.)

open your solutions in 2003. It will give you a message that says this project needs to be upgraded to 2003 and will then upgrade it after you say OK.

It is nothing like upgrading from VB6 to VB.net.
Very smooth

But of course if you do not want to upgrade the projects..

VS2003 does not install over 2002. They run side by side.
So you can keep working on them in 2002 if you wish.

I cannot say that nobody has had problems upgrading from 2002 to 2003 but what I can say is that we have upgraded about 20 projects here at work. All my students have upgraded all their projects and we have encounterd 0 side effects ( except for the ODBC change mentioned above)


DotNetDoc
M.C.S.D.
---------------------------------------

Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.
- Anonymous Chinese Proverb

-----------------------------------

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
- A. Einstein