The Microsoft team announced a new tool called Azure Migrate Application and Code Assessment Tool for .NET (abbreviated as AppCAT). This tool is intended to help developers migrate on-premises .NET applications to Azure. The AppCAT tool allows you to assess your .NET source code, configuration, and binaries to identify issues and opportunities that may arise during the Azure migration process.
As reported, its main purpose is to highlight the challenges you may face when porting your applications to Azure and recommend modern cloud-native solutions to enhance performance, scalability, and security. That’s it.
AppCAT is available in two versions: a Visual Studio extension and a .NET CLI tool, giving you flexibility in how you use it. Once the analysis begins, the tool generates a comprehensive report highlighting the checks and changes needed to ensure that the migrated application functions properly.
As reported, AppCAT uses static code analysis to determine application technology usage and identify areas that may need attention. It facilitates efficient collaboration as users can navigate to specific lines of code, address issues, mark them as resolved, and save progress for future reference.
This tool provides an estimate of the amount of effort required to address each problem, application component, or entire project. Provides detailed guidance on problem resolution and provides links to relevant Microsoft documentation for users.
Both the CLI tool and the Visual Studio version allow users to save analysis results in HTML, CSV, and JSON formats. HTML reports are very similar to Visual Studio dashboards and display information about the number of projects analyzed, incidents, and problems.
(Report generated after migration, Source: Announcing the Azure Migrate Application and Code Assessment Tool for .NET)
This report evaluates the effort required to resolve each incident, problem, or project and categorizes incidents by severity. Different views provide insight into incidents, guidance on resolution, and direct access to the corresponding code.
The official announcement post includes detailed step-by-step documentation articles for both Visual Studio and .NET CLI approaches.
AppCAT currently supports projects written in C# and Visual Basic and analyzes code for project types such as ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core, and Class Libraries. Compatible with all .NET Frameworks, including .NET Framework, .NET Core, and .NET 5+.
For Azure targets, this tool identifies potential migration issues for Azure App Service, AKS, and Azure Container Apps. As reported, future updates may include the ability to set explicit targets and filter recommendations accordingly.
Finally, the development team says it is looking at its future roadmap and is focused on enhancing the tool with AI capabilities and integrating the tool with Copilot for comprehensive migration assistance.
Similarly, Olya Gavrysh, Senior Product Manager, .NETwrites:
Another big feature we’re currently working on is providing more curated assessments based on the Azure targets of your choice. We plan to add the ability to set goals before reporting and create reports based on those goals.