Preparing to migrate to MCMS 2002 and ASP.net

Summary: Learn the benefits of migrating to Microsoft®content Management Server (MCMS) and learn how to prepare for migration.

Brief introduction

The Microsoft®content Management Server (MCMS) Web site consists of an ASP page based on MCMS templates and placeholders. Any decision to migrate site content involves choosing the migration path that best suits your organization's needs. Depending on the design of your site and the time and resources available in your organization, you can choose:

. Install MCMS 2002, use database Configuration application (DCA) to migrate your MCMS 2001 database to the MCMS 2002 database, resolve all issues recorded in the migration report, and identify your MCMS 2002 The ASP site works correctly. For information on the tasks performed by DCA during the upgrade from MCMS 2001 to MCMS 2002, see the "Improved Migration support" section of this article.

. Convert all or part of your templates from ASP to asp.net to leverage the benefits of integrating with microsoft®visual studio®.net. To update a site based on MCMS 2002 ASP to a ASP.net site, only simple, intuitive code changes are required. For instructions on changing your code, see the "Migrating to ASP.net Sites" section of this article.

. A phased, step-by-step approach to migrating through a hybrid site based on ASP and asp.net. For more information about mixed site issues, see the "Migrating to a mixed site" section of this article.

Although you can choose the migration path, you must upgrade to MCMS 2002 and convert the template to ASP.net to take full advantage of the features and benefits of ASP.net, including standards-based interoperability, cross-platform connectivity, modular and reusable code, and high-performance, secure managed code. Because ASP.net is a basic technology that is transformed from Active Server Pages (ASP), migrating your site involves rewriting some code. However, the following sections provide detailed information on how to migrate, from which you can see that converting an ASP based template to ASP.net is a relatively simple, intuitive process that minimizes your development effort.

MCMS 2002 Overview

MCMS 2002 supports both the. NET Framework and traditional COM technologies. You can continue to use ASP for development, or you can choose to use asp.net. It all depends on you. To help you understand the impact of migrating to ASP.net on MCMS sites, and to be fully prepared for migrating to MCMS 2002, this article describes, in particular, the following three areas, based on the impact on migration work:

Improved template development experience

Improved MCMS Publishing API flexibility

Improved migration support

Improved template development experience

MCMS 2002 makes significant changes to the template architecture to be able to work with other WEB development tools, such as Microsoft Visual studio®. NET) to better integrate and accelerate the development process. This section describes two significant architectural changes:

Changes to MCMS template architecture

Placeholder Changes

Changes to MCMS template architecture