I wanted to write up an article that elaborates on a presentation I gave on some but not all of the new features that will be upcoming in Sitecore 7. Mostly I'm going to focus on the updates around Lucene search but I'll also touch on some of the other features as well. This will be a longer article so be warned.
When it comes to working with .NET on the web you have a lot of flexibility on how you approach a project. One particular aspect which seems to be a constant point of contention is the differences between Visual Studio's Website (WS) and Visual Studio's Web Application project (WAP). I had to work with both and over a long time and lot of arguments I learned quite a bit about the differences. Almost anyone who has written an article about this will tell you that you can accomplish pretty much any task with either approach and that choosing one over the other really comes down to your preference and situation. I started working on the WS model and have found that it is suitable for some tasks but the longer I develop the more I find myself using the WAP model because the environment and tools it offers tends to help me accomplish my goals faster and with more precision. It should also be noted that both project types are still reliant on IIS and the model type you choose really only changes the way you work with the project, not how IIS views the files. It's more a difference in the paradigm the two offer.