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aniston

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VS 2005 vs 2003 - Backwards Compatible ?

We're considering upgrading to MS Visual Studio 2005 from VS 2003.  Our concern is backwards compatability with existing web apps.  At the moment we have several applications running under ASP.NET v1.1 (mostly in C#) on our Win2K3 box.  We intend on using the capabilities of .NET v1.1 for at least another year or so as we have several existing apps that were composed under VS 2003 and .NET v1.1.

My quesitons are:

1. Can VS 2005 be installed on the same development box with VS 2003?

2. Is VS 2005 capable of reading VS 2003 code and can compile code that is still compatabile with our existing ASP.NET v1.1 portal (we use Rainbow Portal) and existing .DLLs / Source in production that was compiled using VS 2003 / .NET v1.1 ?

Thanks.

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p_davis

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Yeah.

Thats true. Both will work on the same box.
But the problem might arise when you try to open 2003 app with 2005.

Without conversion it wont run.

You might even have to undergo the changing procedure for some of the applications from 1.1 to 2.0

I don't think it converts the framework you're using after you converted the project. Your old (2003) project will still be running on 1.1 framework even if you opened it in 2005 VS and converted it into 2005 VS version. So, there should be no harm of using 2005 for working with 2003 project. UNLESS you're using some custom modules (reporting, analysis, etc.) in which case it might be a pain. ALSO whatever you decide to do, DO NOT open your 2003 project in 2005 before you made a full backup copy of it as you won't be able to open it in 2003 afterwords. BUT if you have done it already, there is still a way to save you work :) - You can create a new project in 2003 and just add all objects and web pages to it manually from your project converted in 2005.

Cheers,
Yurich
i'm still interested,

regards,
yurich