Peter Ty assembled a good reference of links for Visual Basic 6 Upgardes to .NET.
Enjoy!
http://blogs.msdn.com/peterty/archive/2007/05/25/end-user-computing-foxpro-and-vb-migration.aspx
The launch of ArtinSoft's spanish web site (www.artinsoft.com.mx) comes in synch with ArtinSoft's winning a very large contract to migrate over 170 Visual Basic applications at Banamex (a Citi Group subsidiary). The applications will be fully updated and deployed by the bank in less than one year period. This is a record time for such a large migration project: over 5 millions lines of code!
Banamex performed extensive research on how to approach the VB6 support deadline. Since the beginning of the evaluation process the internal debate was weather to automatically migrate or to rewrite the apps.
They did a full assessment of their application portfolio and separeted the applications that were about to be retired and choose the applications that were functionally relevant to the business. They observed that the chosen applications were simply performing all the business requirements they were supposed to perform, therefore no need to change them functionally! The next realization was that a rewriting was definetely NOT the cost-effective way to solve the situation. The estimated difference betweeb a rewrite and a migration was 5 to 1.
Banamex showed once more that if your application is performing and what you need to do is move to adopt .NET and all the benefits that come with it then the best way forward is through automatic upgrade.
Read more about the Banamex story at: the following links (some are in spanish):
La República: http://www.larepublica.net/app/cms/www/index.php?pk_articulo=854
El Financiero: www.elfinancierocr.com/edactual/tecnologia1231205.html
CIO América Latina: http://www.cioal.com/pcwla/cioaldocs.nsf/pages/8E66B81ACF8DB582852573500015F54B
Pergamino Virtual: http://www.pergaminovirtual.com.ar/revista/cgi-bin/hoy/archivos/2007/00001122.shtml
Business News Americas: http://bnamericas.com/login.jsp?idioma=I&urlJump=story.jsp$SEP$idioma$EQ$I$AMP$sector$EQ$1$AMP$noticia$EQ$406218
Yahoo! España: http://es.biz.yahoo.com/10092007/185/firma-costarricense-software-moderniza-sistemas-banamex.html
Yahoo! México: http://mx.news.yahoo.com/.../38/negocios-firma-costarricense-software-moderniza-sistemas-banamex.html&printer=1
La Prensa Gráfica: www.laprensagrafica.com/economia/870594.asp
TMCnet: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/09/10/2925480.htm
Link to ArtinSoft – soluciones de migración de software
ArtinSoft just lunched its web site for the spanish market and specifically for the Mexican market.
Many of the same testing principles apply when working with upgraded applications. However, there are certain differences in the process that are worth noting. Here is a list of FAQs that are answered in the 21st and last chapter of the Migration Guide that ArtinSoft has prepared. Check it out and if you have further questions I'll be happy to discuss them with you.
Link to Testing Upgraded Applications
The ArtinSoft migration guide to VB Upgrades and Conversions is becoming a huge success. It is clear that people are consulting it. To me, this is just another evidence that the movement of VB6 applications to .NET is happening!
Link to Upgrading VB6 to .NET – migration guide FAQ
Your comments are more than welcome!
Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester Research released yesterday a piece to help dissipate the FUD around Visual Basic Upgrades.
The executive summary of the Trend piece "Keys to Successfull VB6 Migration: Dispelling App Dev Professionals Fear, Uncertainty, And Doubt" can be found at: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,41746,00.html
I agree with Jeffrey's view of the situation. In a few words, VB6 customers should seriously consider a migration (it's about time!) and with the proper project consideration migrations can be executed almost painlessly. I certainly recommend the research!
A recent article by Jason Pontin on the Ney York Times began with exactly these words. It went on like this:
... Software failures cost $59.5 billion a year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded in a 2002 study, and fully 25 percent of commercial software projects are abandoned before completion. Of projects that are finished, 75 percent ship late or over budget.
The reasons aren’t hard to divine. Programmers don’t know what a computer user wants because they spend their days interacting with machines. They hunch over keyboards, pecking out individual lines of code in esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring over illustrated manuscripts.
Worse, programs today contain millions of lines of code, and programmers are fallible like all other humans: there are, on average, 100 to 150 bugs per 1,000 lines of code, according to a 1994 study by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. No wonder so much software is so bad: programmers are drowning in ignorance, complexity and error.” ...
Doesn't the above paragraph look like the perfect reason why an automated migration of a valuable application makes sense? When you are doing an automatic migration you do not have to guess the intentions of the users. You have the perfect specification. You have a working application! Then you might ask, if it is working why should you even touch it in the first place? And we are going back to the reasons to migrate. Typically an application becomes a candidate for a migration if it continues to support the business but need to evolve and it is written in a technology/platform that does not provide the best advantages to the current business scenario. When an application meets these characteristics one of the common decisions is to throw it a away and re-build it! Here is when we again enter in the cycle where most projects go down an unmanageable spiral of over time and over budget mainly because of the isses in translating business requirements into working code. An alternative is the automated migration. Take the best possible specification (the app itself), use the computer to upgrade it to a more modern environment (automatic migration) and take advantage of the latest techniques that software development tools can provide (.NET). Why start from scratch when all you need is to continue to evolve a working app on a modern set of technologies? VB6 application can be moved .NET, it is possible to extend their life, recover all the embedded knowledge and continue to extract value from them for years to come.
If programming is so hard as the New York Times implies, why shouldn't we use techniques to reduce the amount of required programming? Automatic migration is one of those techniques. The article goes on illustrating another potential solution: Intentional Programming. The idea is to capture the intention of the users and translate them into usable programs. Again, more support for my thesis, why not use a working application as the source of intentions?
Microsoft and ArtinSoft published the Upgrade guide for Visual Basic 6 to .NET. This guide is been re-purposed as a list of FAQs to easily search and allow programmers and managers to find out about the best practices when planning a migration project from VB to Visual Basic .NET 2005.
The first two chapters are out, more will come in the next weeks.
"The purpose of these pages is to provide a comprehensive FAQ for the Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005 guide. This VB migration material was developed jointly by Microsoft and ArtinSoft, a company with vast experience in Visual Basic conversions and the developer of the Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard, the Visual Basic 6.0 Upgrade Assessment Tool, the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion and the ASP to ASP Migration Assistant, among other software migration products."
Link to Upgrading VB6 to .NET – migration guide FAQ
Juan Pastor recently published an article that analyzes the risk of having mission critical applications running on non supported software (does it sound like VB6?). Will you get in trouble with Sarbanes-Oxley? Read on and you'll find out. However, let me just ask you this: Why should you take the risk?
-------
The white paper considers the latest developments regarding SOX compliance and explains how organizations can ensure ongoing certification by migrating their legacy finance applications to a modern IT platform.
Link to Migrating-Away-From-Compliance-Quicksand
This is an interesting blog post about some tips to prepare for a VB migration.
Link to Migrating VB6 to VB.NET Safely « Star Struck Developer
Interestingly, now the dilemma is no longer weather I should upgrade or not but HOW do I upgrade and minimize the potential issues in doing so.
"But life does march on and .NET is now an essential part of any serious developers inventory. So this is the strategy I am following to at least provide the team the opportunity of migrating code to C# or VB.NET."
Are you wondering what's Microsoft support policy for Visual Basic 6? Here is the information:
Link to Microsoft Support Lifecycle
SearchVB website just published a QUIZ to test your knowledge about VB6 migration.
I read the questions, the answers and the pointers to more resources. It is a fun way to learn a bit more about the process. I do agree with most answers and pointers even if sometimes the comments on why to move or how to move are a little away from what I believe. I still think you can find this useful.
-- "It's not tremendously exciting stuff and we'd all like to be able to start from scratch, but there's a huge investment in these legacy applications," said Keith Pleas, MVP architect and head of Keith Pleas & Associates. --
There is a fundamental question in the software world. Are applications like cars? Do we use them a few years and then we throw them away? Or are applications like buildings? We treat them as important assets and we try to extract as much value as possible from them? Nobody blows away a building just to build a new one from scratch ( well... maybe in Vegas!) , on the other hand we tend to do exactly that with software applications. Should we???
You ought to yourself and the company you work for to evaluate Automatic Migration as an option to bring new life to VB6 applications. As Keith points out, there is a huge investment and we need to maximize the ROI.
This web cast about the VB Migration Guide gives you a nice overview of the content of the book and some essential guidance to make decisions.
Link to Webcast: How to upgrade legacy VB 6 applications
My friend Chazu Lee from Microsoft in Japan shared this page with me. It contains lots of resources in Japanese for VB Migrations. Thank you Chazu!!
Link to パートナー情報
In this webcast, we present a complete and proven methodology for semi-automatically upgrading a Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 project to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2005. We cover all of the phases involved in migrating to Visual Basic .NET 2005, from initial assessment and return on investment (ROI) calculation to final testing and deployment of the application. Tune in to learn about ArtinSoft’s proven expertise, including actual statistics from real-world migration projects.
Presenter: Hendel Valverde, Senior Consultant & Trainer, ArtinSoft
Link to ArtinSoft News And Events: ArtinSoft and Microsoft Announce New Webcast on VB6 to .NET 2005 Migration Methodology
Si usted habla español este sitio es un excelente repositorio de información acerca de las migraciones a .NET en general. Por el momento el enfoque es más hacia Visual Basic.
Link to Centro de Excelencia en Migración MSDN
"El CEM.Net es un programa de apoyo a clientes en Latinoamérica, que busca asegurar el éxito en los proyectos de migración de software hacia la plataforma .Net. "
El CEM tiene cómo meta \de compartir conocimiento, dar soporte y apoyar el creciente número de clientes con necesidades de migración a .Net. ¡Actividades como eventos en línea y capacitaciones en sitio están disponibles!
-----
The Center of Excellence for migration is a Microsoft program targeted at LATAM customers to help them make the JUMP to .NET. If you speak spanish this is an excellent repository of information.
I find it always interesting that new ways to postpone the VB6 migrations are introduced. the title of this post is the combination of an Infoworld and an Eweek article on the subject. I understand where a tool (Microsoft InteropForms Toolkit 1.0 ) that attpepts to tempt VB6 developers use .NET while retaining a safety net in VB6 is coming from. The whole idea is to reduce the risk, to make a transition smoother. But are we really achieving the business benefits by doing it? I think it goes all back to the fact that people do not believe an automatic migration from VB6 is possible. I firmly believe it. If you have followed this blog, you probably believe it too. In any case, every effort in the direction of helping customers move is laudable!
Look at the Infoworld article: http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/008022.html
or the Eweek article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2019386,00.as...
This is another big overlook of mine. ArtinSoft's VB Companion has been able to directly generate C# for ages. How come I have not told about it here?
Anyway, maybe the question to ask is: Should I move to VB.NET or C#? Of course the answer is not obvious. From the technical perspective both languages give you pretty much the same power. Microsoft is positioning VB.NET more as a RAD environment and C# more for Systems programming. However, in my opinion it is more a question of preference. If your company has chosen C# for .NET development then the VB Companion can help you go straight there.
What do you prefer? C#? or VB.NET? Which one do you think is easier for the VB6 Programmer?
I cannot believe I just overlooked this link for so long. I have announced back in May that the VB Upgrade Guide is available in print, but I forgot to mention that it is also available for download at MSDN.
Link to Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005
This is a great resource to understand how to perform the upgrades. In addition, if you are looking for the VB Companion mentioned in the guide please go to: http://www.artinsoft.com/pr_vbcompanion.aspx it substantially reduces the cost of an upgrade.
I'd like to hear comments on the usefulnness of the guide. Let me know!
This is a very interesting article with yet another way to approach the Visual Basic migration issue. It demonstrates once more that the process is not only feasible but highly rewarding.
Refactor Your Way to Migration Success
Source: Visual Studio Magazine – Refactor Your Way to Migration Success
In addition, I would like to also comment that ArtinSoft's Visual Basic Upgrade Companion product already implements most of the suggested refactorings and thus reduces dramatically the time required to move from VB6 to Optimized .NET.