The Real Challenge

Why Component Migration Is Harder Than It Looks

The name of a component tells you almost nothing about what migration will require. The configuration, events, and extensions tell you everything.

A Telerik RadGrid with 50 column configurations, custom column sorting behavior, client-side row selection with checkbox state, server-side filtering bound to a custom data adapter, and row-level conditional formatting is not the same as any random "data grid." Replacing it with a generic grid component in the target framework will break every one of those behaviors — and none of them will throw an obvious error. They will simply not work.

We approach every third-party component instance by asking: what features of this component is the application actually using? What configuration has been applied? What events are handled, and what do those handlers do? Only then do we identify the appropriate equivalent in the target environment and build the transformation rules for that specific usage pattern.

The result is a migration that behaves the same for the end user — because we migrated the behavior, not just the component reference.

  • We inventory every component instance — not just which vendors are present
  • Configuration analysis captures every property, template, and event binding
  • Target mapping is specific to your usage — not a generic vendor-to-vendor chart
  • Validation confirms behavioral equivalence before delivery
Our Process

Our Component Migration Process

Five phases that take a component from inventory through validated migration — with no assumptions about what "equivalent" means until we have analyzed the actual usage.

Component Inventory

A full automated inventory of every third-party control used across the application — which vendor, which component, which version, and where. We count instances, identify high-frequency components that will drive the most value from transformation rules, and flag any end-of-life vendor versions that affect the migration strategy. The inventory is the foundation for everything that follows. No assumptions about what is present — we scan and enumerate.

Usage Analysis

For each component instance we analyze the full configuration surface: every property set in markup or code-behind, every template defined, every event handler registered, every client-side script that interacts with the component's JavaScript API. We distinguish between default behavior (which the target equivalent will provide automatically) and configured behavior (which requires explicit mapping). A RadGrid with 50 columns configured has 50 columns of migration scope — we capture all of it.

Target Environment Mapping

We map each component's actual usage to the closest equivalent in the target environment — Blazor, Razor Pages, Angular, React, or another modern framework depending on your migration strategy. This mapping is usage-specific: not "Telerik RadGrid maps to Blazor Grid" but "RadGrid configured with server-side sorting, client-side row selection, and custom aggregate row maps to Blazor DataGrid with these specific property bindings and event handlers." When a direct equivalent does not exist for a feature, we document it explicitly and propose the implementation strategy.

Rule Generation

We create transformation rules specific to your component usage patterns. For high-frequency component configurations that appear repeatedly across the application, rules are generated once and applied consistently everywhere — ensuring uniform behavior across all instances. For unusual or one-off configurations, rules are hand-crafted. The output is a deterministic transformation pipeline that processes your component markup and code-behind and produces the target equivalent — not a manual rewrite of every usage site.

Validation

AI validates that the migrated component behavior matches the original for all configured properties and events. We run behavioral test cases derived from the original application against both the legacy and migrated implementations and compare outputs. Sorting behavior, filter results, selection state, aggregate calculations, and template rendering are all verified. Any discrepancy is flagged and resolved before the migration is considered complete for that component.

Vendor Coverage

Component Coverage by Vendor

We have migration experience across the full commercial Web Forms component ecosystem. Every major vendor family is covered — and so are the controls you built in-house.

DevExpress ASP.NET Web Forms

ASPxGrid, ASPxScheduler, ASPxRichEdit, ASPxChartControl, ASPxDateEdit, ASPxComboBox, ASPxFileManager, and the full DevExpress Web Forms suite. ASPxGrid's server-side processing model and client-side API require careful equivalence mapping in Blazor or other targets.

Infragistics Ultimate UI

UltraWebGrid, WebDataGrid, WebHierarchicalDataGrid, WebSchedule, Ignite UI controls, and the full Infragistics web component catalog. Hierarchical grid migration — parent-child row relationships, expand/collapse behavior, banded column layouts — is a particular area of expertise.

ComponentOne Studio ASP.NET

C1GridView, C1Chart, C1ReportViewer, C1Scheduler, C1DataFilter, and the Studio ASP.NET component library. We handle the ComponentOne data binding model, OLAP data source integrations, and the print/export capabilities that many applications rely on.

Syncfusion Essential UI Kit

Essential Grid, Essential Chart, Essential Schedule, Essential Spreadsheet, Essential PDF Viewer, and the Syncfusion Web Forms suite. Syncfusion's data virtualization and real-time update patterns have specific equivalents in the modern Syncfusion Blazor suite that require configuration mapping rather than reimplementation.

Custom / Homegrown Controls

Many enterprise Web Forms applications contain composite controls, templated controls, and controls that wrap third-party components with custom business logic. We reverse-engineer these from source code and runtime behavior to determine the correct migration strategy — treating them as first-class migration targets, not afterthoughts.

What About Vendor Modernization Kits? Most major vendors — Telerik, DevExpress, Syncfusion, and others — offer modern versions of their components for Blazor and other targets. We work with these when available. But we always validate that the specific feature set your application uses is supported in the modern version — not just that a product with the same name exists. A vendor's Blazor Grid may not support every configuration option that the Web Forms Grid did. We identify those gaps before migration begins, not after delivery.

Special Case

The Custom Control Problem

Many enterprise Web Forms applications have controls that no vendor ever shipped — built by your team, over years, to solve problems that no off-the-shelf component addressed.

Composite controls that aggregate multiple vendor controls into a reusable unit. Templated controls with complex data binding models. Controls that wrap a Telerik or DevExpress component with application-specific business logic baked into the control itself. HttpHandlers acting as component back-ends. Custom designers registered for the Visual Studio toolbox.

These are not outliers in large enterprise applications — they are the norm. And they cannot be handled by any automated tool that only understands vendor-published APIs.

We treat custom controls as first-class migration targets. We analyze the control's source code, examine its rendering output, observe its runtime behavior, catalog its public API surface, and map all call sites across the application. From that analysis, we determine whether the right approach is to reimplement in the target framework, replace with a vendor component, or decompose the control into simpler components that the target architecture handles more naturally.

  • Full source analysis of every custom control class
  • Runtime behavior observation for controls that generate dynamic output
  • Complete call site enumeration across the application
  • Migration strategy determined per-control based on actual complexity
  • All custom control migrations validated against behavioral tests

Why Generic Tools Fail Here

A generic migration tool has rules for asp:GridView, rad:RadGrid, and dx:ASPxGrid. It has no rules for yourcompany:DataEntryPanel — the control your team built in 2009 that is used on 47 pages and encapsulates a complete mini-workflow. That control will be left in place, or deleted, or converted to something broken. None of those outcomes are acceptable when the application is in production.

Get Started

Find Out What Components You're Working With

Our free assessment identifies every third-party component in your Web Forms application, which vendor versions are present, and which controls appear most frequently — giving you a clear picture of your component migration scope before any commitment.