News

AWS Transform Expands to Full-Stack Windows Modernization

• By David Ramel
• 12/02/2025

AWS has extended AWS Transform for .NET into a full-stack Windows modernization service that updates application code, databases, and legacy ASP.NET user interfaces together, adding SQL Server to Aurora PostgreSQL migration and ASP.NET Web Forms to Blazor conversion.

AWS Transform for .NET reached general availability in May 2025 as an agentic AI service for large-scale .NET modernization. AWS says customers wanted a broader tool that could handle the common three-tier Windows pattern where .NET apps, SQL Server back ends, and older ASP.NET UI layers are tightly coupled. The new AWS Transform full-stack Windows modernization capability is intended to coordinate those moves in a single workflow.

The service begins with a Windows modernization job in the AWS Transform console. Users connect source repositories and SQL Server instances (running on Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS). Transform performs discovery to map databases to dependent .NET repos, then groups related components into migration "waves" so applications and their databases are transformed in tandem. AWS describes this as a way to reduce rework that can happen when app and database modernization are handled separately.

For each wave, AWS Transform converts SQL Server schemas and database objects into PostgreSQL-compatible equivalents for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, generating a conversion report for review. Items that cannot be fully automated can be finished manually, with changes applied to the target database. Data migration is optional and uses AWS Database Migration Service to move data after schema conversion. Transform then updates dependent .NET application code to work with PostgreSQL and commits the transformed artifacts to a target branch. Optionally, it can deploy the modernized application to Linux targets for validation using customizable CloudFormation templates.

On the UI side, AWS Transform now modernizes ASP.NET Web Forms apps to Blazor, complementing existing support for modernizing MVC Razor views to ASP.NET Core Razor views. For Web Forms projects, the service converts pages and controls into Razor components and updates configuration patterns to align with current ASP.NET Core approaches.

The full-stack workflow currently supports .NET 6 and later. Older .NET Framework apps are expected to be ported first using AWS Transform for .NET, then brought through the full-stack path. Initial availability starts in US East (N. Virginia), with support for SQL Server 2008 R2 through 2022 across editions, and modernization coverage for common Entity Framework versions.