DeCare Systems Ireland Blog

Are we looking at the first generation of legacy .Net applications ?

Recently (i.e. today), I had the task of getting a .NET 1.1 App up and running on an X64 box running Windows server 2003(x64)… and with the deployment  came the realisation that we are now heading towards the next generation of software architecture.

That’s not to say that I’m shocked & horrified - it was more of a “ah, it’s that time again…”. Having experienced the torture of working with 16-bit and 32-bit technologies in an application before, I vowed never to work on such a solution again.

Looking ahead, it’s becoming apparent that your .NET 1.1 apps are about to turn into legacy systems - There isn’t a ’.NET 1.1 Framework (x64) Redistributable’… and there won’t be !

The .NET 2.0 framework does have both a 32-bit and X64 version that will happily sit on this new powersource and tip away nicely.

Indeed, you can install the .NET 1.1 framework and 32-bit version of the .NET 2.0 framework on an X64 box…but you’ll never reach top speed in terms of what the X64 Operating system twinned with the x64 version of the .NET 2.0 framework  can achieve.

The main issue is that IIS6 will only ever run in 32 bit or 64 bit mode- not both. You can switch from one to the other and back again , but never run both at any one time .

Leaving IIs 7 out of the equation, let’s think IIS 6 options . . .

Option 1) Bury your head in the sand:  You can deploy your .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 (32-bit) apps to this powerhouse , X64 Operating System , which would be similar to buying  a Porsche 911 carrera and placing a restricter on the engine to ensure 60mph is max. speed.

Option 2) Bite the Bullet : Upgrade your existing .NET 1.1 apps to .NET 2.0. You can then deploy them onto the X64 box running the x64 version of the .NET 2.0 framework.

While option 1 isn’t going to hurt in the short to medium term…in my experience, it’s best to jump ahead when you get the chance. Option 2 might be the long-term, unavoidable solution in any case…and jumping from .NET 1.1 to .NET 3.0 onwards is not something that I would want to have to deal with.

The hardware industry slows for no man…bigger, better, faster are the words that drive the industry… As developers, we need to be aware of both the frameworks that we develop against and the hardware that powers the framework…

In DeCare, our internal Agile Development Process means that , as developers, we are used to frequent iterative releases of our software solutions. However, developers in general do get used to developing against a particular framework.

Some developers might think that moving-on (to a new version of the .NET framework) can be a painful process…but  - “wrong !” - a painful process would be migrating your applications from .NET 1.1 to .NET 3.0 + . 

So, can we be agile when moving onto new development frameworks ? 

Yes, we can and we should. Already I am starting into the design of a WCF solution for the .NET 3.0  framework. The aforementioned .NET 1.1 app will be scheduled for an upgrade and all will be happy in the X64 world of the future.

 …for how long - well , that’s another days work !

- Alan Crowley -