Moving Your Architecture

to .NET – Part III

Microsoft® Corporation
What We Will Cover
 Moving from COM to .NET
 COM => .NET
 Visual Basic® 6 => Visual Basic .NET
 ASP => ASP.NET
 Using adapters
 XML Web services
 .NET Remoting
Session Prerequisites
 Knowledge of one of the following
languages: Visual Basic .NET, C#, C++,
or Visual Basic 6
 Minimal understanding of the
differences between Visual Basic 6 and
Visual Basic .NET

Level 200
So Why this Presentation?
 From COM to .NET, learn how
architecture has changed
 Discuss different way to use existing
COM components within Visual Basic
.NET
 Web services
 .NET Remoting

 Best practices
Demonstrations
 Adapter components
 Wrap Visual Basic 6 components with
Web services
 Replace Visual Basic 6 components
with .NET Remoting
 Using typed DataSets
Agenda
 Re-architecting
 Data flow and physical tiers
 Migrating the UI
 Migrating the business and data logic
 Typed DataSets
 Best practices
Re-architecting
Migration Leads to some Re-architecting
 Migration will lead to some re-architecting of
your application if you want to leverage .NET
properly
 You can re-architect your application in steps
(using COM Interop)
 Good logical architecture is key: .NET won’t
solve issues caused by bad design
 Key question: How does data flow through the
layers?
Re-architecting
Migration Leads to some Re-architecting
 .NET uses strong typing
 No more variants
 No more default properties
 Prefer ADO.NET over ADO
 .NET can still work with ADO, including recordsets,
but ADO.NET is much faster and requires less
memory
 ASP.NET offers better model for building UI
Re-architecting
Migration in Steps with COM(+)
 Your Visual Basic .NET code can interact with
existing COM components
 You can also expose your .NET components to
COM
 Start with migrating the UI from ASP to
ASP.NET
 Your ASP.NET pages can then talk to existing COM
business components
 In many cases, 70% of the performance gained when
moving to ASP.NET comes from migrating the UI
Agenda
 Re-architecting
 Data flow and physical tiers
 Migrating the UI
 Migrating the business and data logic
 Typed DataSets
 Best practices
Data Flow
How Does Data Flow through the Layers?

 Weakly-typed variables (variant, object)

 Strongly-typed variables (string, double,
record)
 XML
 Disconnected ADO recordsets
 Straight access from ASP to data via ADO
Data Flow
Recommendations
 Weakly-typed variables and functions (variant, object)
must be avoided or replaced by strong typing (all .NET
classes are strongly typed)
 XML poses no problem, but .NET uses a different DOM
than ASP/COM
 Disconnected ADO recordsets should be replaced by
ADO.NET DataSets
 Having code that directly accesses the database in your
ASP or ADO.NET page is not a good idea
 Can expose connection strings, etc
Physical Tiers
Questions to Ask Yourself

 Does your code currently run on different physical

tiers?
 Example: ASP on Web servers, business logic on
dedicated application servers, data on SQL Server
servers
 Do you want to keep your current infrastructure
architecture or move to another one?
 .NET makes distributing over physical tiers easy with
.NET Remoting or Web services
 Serviced components can use DCOM
Agenda
 Re-architecting
 Data flow and physical tiers
 Migrating the UI
 Migrating the business and data logic
 Typed DataSets
 Best practices
Migrating the UI first
Moving from ASP to ASP.NET

 Replace ASP pages by ASP.NET pages with

user controls/Web controls
 Controls give ASP.NET a Visual Basic 6-like
forms capability – without the developer having
to worry about state
 Very powerful
 Much shorter development time for UIs
 Better code reuse by defining page elements as
reusable controls
Migrating the UI first
Rich Development Environment

 ASP.NET comes with many prewritten controls

 TextBox, Calendar, DropDown, ...
 Other controls can be downloaded
 TreeView, TabularControl, ...
 Compare to ActiveX® controls, but without the
hassle
 No binary code is executed on the client
 The controls are executed on the server and
generate HTML output
Agenda
 Re-architecting
 Data flow and physical tiers
 Migrating the UI
 Migrating the business and data logic
 Typed DataSets
 Best practices
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Overview

 Two possible migration strategies:

 Replace Visual Basic 6 components directly by
Visual Basic .NET components, horizontally or
vertically
 Let ASP.NET call Web services that encapsulate
Visual Basic 6 business components, then migrate
these as needed to .NET
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Using Adapters
 Your ASP.NET code can talk directly to Visual
Basic 6 COM code, but...
 If your Visual Basic 6 business components
require the passing of variants, write strongly-
typed “in-between” .NET components
(adapters)
 ASP.NET talks to the in-between components
 The in-between components talk to the existing
Visual Basic 6 components and perform data
conversion to strong types
 Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Using Adapters
 VB6.MyWeakComponent:
Public Function UpdatedData(Name As String, Age As
Variant, MyDataArray As Variant) As Variant

 VBNet.MyStrongComponent:
Public Function UpdatedData(Name As String, Age As
Integer, MyDataArray As Array Of Single) As Double

 Inversion 1, VBNet.MyStrongComponent calls

VB6.MyWeakComponent and performs type
conversion as needed
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Using Adapters
After
Before
ASP ASP.NET

Visual Basic Business Visual Basic Adapter

6 comp logic .NET comp logic

Visual Basic Business

6 comp logic
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Using Adapters
 By building these adapter components,
ASP.NET code can be fully typed as needed and
the UI can be completely replaced
 As a next step, you can change the Visual Basic
.NET Business components to replace the
Visual Basic 6 business components
  You have now replaced your business logic layer
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Replacing Visual Basic 6
Components Directly
After
Before
ASP ASP.NET

Visual Basic Business Visual Basic Adapter

6 comp logic .NET comp logic

Visual Basic Business

6 comp logic
 Demonstration 1
Adapter Components
ASP Calling Weakly-typed Visual Basic 6
Component
Weakly–typed Visual Basic 6.0 COM
Component
Strongly-typed ASP.NET Page
Strongly–typed Visual Basic .NET
Component
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Replacing Components Layer-by-layer
 Ifyour original Visual Basic 6 code returned
ADO Recordsets, it is best to make the Visual
Basic .NET versions return ADO.NET DataSets
instead:
 Convert ADO Recordsets to ADO.NET DataSets as
needed in the business layer
 ASP.NET then works only with ADO.NET
 Many ASP.NET Web controls work with DataSets
 ADO.NET DataSets can be marshaled efficiently even
across physical tiers
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Replacing Components Layer-by-layer

 Later, migrate the Data layer and make it return

ADO.NET DataSets instead of ADO Recordsets
 Remove the RecordsetDataSet conversion code
from the business components
 For components you can’t migrate, stick to COM
Interop
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Replacing Components Layer-by-layer

 What about transactional integrity and

security context?
 In Visual Basic 6 under Windows NT: MTS
®

 In Visual Basic 6 under Windows 2000: COM+

 In .NET: COM+
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Replacing Components Layer-by-layer

 Derive your façade components from the

ServicedComponent base class to use COM+
transactions and security
 Note that the components that a ServicedComponent
call, don’t need to be serviced – they use the caller’s
context!
 Use attributes to control configuration
 Best to put them in the AssemblyInfo.vb file
 Register your façade’s assembly in the GAC
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Wrap Visual Basic 6 Components with
Web Services
 Alternatively, start by having your ASP.NET
pages consume .NET Web services that wrap
the Visual Basic 6 components
 This allows for easy separation in physical tiers
(dedicated application servers) as well as
logical tiers
 A better option to separate in physical tiers is to
use .NET Remoting
 If you need transactional integrity across
physical tiers, use Serviced Components
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Wrap Visual Basic 6 Components with
Web Services
After
Before
ASP ASP.NET

Physical boundary

ASP.NET
Visual Basic Business Web
Adapter
service
6 comp logic logic

Visual Basic Business

6 comp logic
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Wrap Visual Basic 6 Components with Web
Services
 Web services use open standards
 You can open your business logic to other
applications as well over the Internet
 But be careful: Web services can be
transactional, but only as the transactional root
 You can’t combine more than one Web service into
a transaction
 Demonstration 2
Wrap Visual Basic 6
Components
with Web Services
Running the Demo Application
Viewing the Client Application
Viewing the Web Service Source Code
Viewing the Visual Basic 6 Source Code
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Replace Visual Basic 6 Components with
Remoting
After
Before
ASP ASP.NET

Physical boundary

Visual Basic Business

6 comp Visual Basic Adapter
logic
.NETcomp logic

Visual Basic Business

6 comp logic
Migrating the Business/Data Tiers
Replace Visual Basic 6 Components with
Remoting
 Remoting is “.NET DCOM”
 Better performance than with Web services
 We measured TCP binary remoting to provide 200%-
300% the speed of Web services with SOAP
 However, calling a component through remoting
does not maintain transactional integrity and
security context
 Remoting only works from .NET to .NET
 Demonstration 3
Replace Visual Basic 6
Components
with .NET Remoting
Running the Demo Application
Viewing the Client Application
Viewing the Remote Object Source Code
Agenda
 Re-architecting
 Data flow and physical tiers
 Migrating the UI
 Migrating the business and data logic
 Typed DataSets
 Best practices
Typed DataSets
Overview
 Contain structured data:
 ShoppingCart, UserProfile, Catalog
 Are classes that inherit from DataSet
 Inherit all DataSet’s standard functionalities
 Can be automatically copied, merged, serialized, ...
 Canbe autogenerated by the .NET Framework’s
xsd.exe tool
Typed DataSets
Example
 Addproperties specific to the structured
data:
 IntelliSense!

Untyped
ds.Tables(“Customers”).Rows(0).Columns(“Name”)
= “Steve Ballmer”

Typed
ds.Customers(0).Name = “Steve Ballmer”
Typed DataSets
Issues
 They don’t solve all your data modeling needs:
 You still have to write code to populate them
 Marshalling serializable objects (such as DataSets)
rather than plain strings (such as XML strings) requires
more CPU
 ...
but the simplicity and power of using DataSets
more than makes up for it
 See IBuySpy reference implementation
 Demonstration 4
Using Typed DataSets
Running the Demo Application
Viewing the Client Application
Best Practices
Part I
 Build your UI in ASP.NET using Web controls and
user controls
 Use ASP.NET’s caching mechanisms to their
maximum for performance
 Output caching handled by ASP.NET
 Cache API for explicit caching
 Don’t use Session state unless you absolutely
have to (and in most cases, you don’t)
 Store state in SQL Server for availability – it’s not
much slower than the out-of-process state server
Best Practices
Part II
 Use Enterprise Templates that implement and
force good coding practices
 Use .NET’s standard naming conventions
 Use structured exception handling
 Use Typed DataSets rather than “generic”
DataSets whenever possible
 It’s not the ultimate panacea but it’s better than generic
DataSets for strong typing and IntelliSense
Session Summary
 Migration
 ASP -> ASP.NET
 Visual Basic 6 -> Visual Basic .NET
 COM -> .NET
 Typing
 Weak
 Strong
 Adapters
 Web service
 .NET Remoting
 Best practices
For More Information…
 MSDN® Web site at
 msdn.microsoft.com
 Visual Basic .NET Home Page
 www.msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/
 Visual Basic .NET Migration
 support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?ID
=FH;EN-US;vbdnmig
For More Information…
 Migrating to ASP.NET: Key Considerations
other Web sites
 msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/aspne
=true
 Converting ASP to ASP.NET
 msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
=/library/en-us/
dndotnet/html/convertasptoaspnet.asp
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Session Credits
 Author:
 Producer/Editor: Field Content Team
 Reviewers
 Field Content Council