MVC 3 - Any new features to explore for an existing MVC 2 application?

Question

I have an existing ASP.NET MVC 2 application that is working well and is usually easy to maintain. I had a lull in development yesterday so I upgraded the solution to ASP.NET MVC 3 and everything appears to be working.

I've been researching ASP.NET MVC 3 and there are a number of improvements including the Razor view engine, integrated support for unobtrusive JavaScript, etc.. These all seem interesting but not necessarily for an existing application that already has dumb views, unobtrusive JavaScript with jQuery, dependency injection, unit testing, etc..

What ASP.NET MVC 3 features, if any, could have the greatest impact on an existing MVC 2 application?

Answer 1

None really. v3 is just a minor update.

However I do find global filters very interesting, so that you don't need to apply them to every controller.

Aside from that, even if you don't upgrade to v3 I advice you to put in a fresh version of jQuery (v3 comes with 1.4.4).

Answer 2

I would only update an existing application to a new framework (not just MVC3) if there were known bugs that were fixed in the newer version. Otherwise why risk it? You would need role out new DLLs (not too hard) and retest your app, which is more of a pain.

I think the approach of installing it in a local environment is valid for testing and investigation. You can always release future versions against MVC3, but don't risk breaking an existing application.