Migrating from ASP.NET to Django?
Carlos Yoder
I have this idea in my head going for a loooong time now. Since I
already deployed my first Django app and everybody's happy (especially
me), I'm getting excited about migrating my main project to Django.
First of all, it's a not a small site, so planning is of the absolute
essence (we do price comparisons for a big catalogue of products).
Has anybody tried to tackle this yet? At all? It's the whole deal:
MSSQL database (I know, I know), IIS6+, C#, a lot of very specific
code, etc.
Is there hope, doctor?
--
Carlos Yoder
http://blog.argentinaslovenia.com/
Julio Nobrega
I haven't found any website that couldn't be made with Django. After
all, it's about HTTP communication. There are even two websites that
deal with price comparison in the wiki
(http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoPoweredSites):
http://www.gutata.com/ and http://niftylist.co.uk/
But I believe none can answer your question besides yourself. Are
you sure you can code in Python this C# specific code that you have?
Does your database serves others apps which you'll have to modify? And
what's a small website or a large one? I've seen Django powering
social networks with more than one million members, but what's the
load? Does it use cache? Does the DBA knows what she do?
If you're confident you can do whatever you do in Django, I say go for it.
--
Julio Nobrega - http://www.inerciasensorial.com.br
Carlos Yoder
> Sure there is hope.
>
> I haven't found any website that couldn't be made with Django. After
> all, it's about HTTP communication. There are even two websites that
> deal with price comparison in the wiki
> (http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoPoweredSites):
>
> http://www.gutata.com/ and http://niftylist.co.uk/
Thanks for those, I had missed them.
> But I believe none can answer your question besides yourself. Are
> you sure you can code in Python this C# specific code that you have?
> Does your database serves others apps which you'll have to modify? And
> what's a small website or a large one? I've seen Django powering
> social networks with more than one million members, but what's the
> load? Does it use cache? Does the DBA knows what she do?
All interesting and meaningful questions that I'm trying to answer
myself. Over the weekend I fetched all our C# code from SVN, and
started the 'migration', so to speak, to my Kubuntu laptop. As I
thought, the biggest monster to tackle would be the database. A 6GB+
behemoth of MSSQL2K goodies is not something you could call a piece of
cake. But the experience of removing so much cruft from the
'templates' (or aspx files) was almost rapturous.
I'm more and more convinced I can do with the Python code for the
views and such, but the database would have to remain in place as it
is: hundreds of stored procedures, a huge, mission-critical DTS
process running every day, etc preclude me from going the
fundamentalist way and migrate everything away to Postgres :-)
Say, if I can successfully introspect my DB into Django models (as
much as possible, I don't expect magic here), I could technically use
Django just for the Front End's views, right? (initially I'd keep our
own admin, since it's the primary interface for our dataentry people).
What do you people say? How would Django running on Windows/IIS6 (now
it's possible, I hear), talking to a MSSQL database, and being used
'just' for the frontend's views sound to you? =)
> If you're confident you can do whatever you do in Django, I say go for it.
That's the thing -- I'm getting very hooked on Django and by
extension, Python. It just makes too much sense to let it go. Myself I
started coding webpages by hand back in '96, with CGI (bash), Perl,
PHP, and then ASP (because of market share), and finally I've been
forced to work in ASP.NET for the last 3 years or so. Don't get me
wrong, I prefer C# over VBScript any day, but I was longing for the
same feeling I got when I first got a whiff of Perl back in the day --
and Python did *just* that.
Anyways, thanks for everything, obrigado, etc. Best regards,