The Myth of Visual Basic Migration / Upgrade

Is the grass greener while doing green-field development?

2008-07-30T00:57:00Z

Milan Negovan in his blog aspnetresources recently published an excerpt of Michael Feathers' book Working Effectively with Legacy Code . I liked the excerpt so much and I believe that it is so pertinent to the topic of my blog that I also will reproduce it verbatim. -- Often people who spend time working on legacy systems wish they could work on green-field systems. It’s fun to build systems from scratch, but frankly, green-field systems have their own set of problems. Over and over again, I...(read more)

Aggiorno Beta2 is out!

2008-06-05T13:49:00Z

How did ArtinSoft got into producing Aggiorno ( www.aggiorno.com )? Well after more than 15 years in the software migration market we learned a few things and we are convinced that developers want to increase their productivity and that automatic programming is a very good mean to do just that. Aggiorno is the latest incarnation of ArtinSoft proven automatic source code manipulation techniques. This time their are aimed at web developers. Aggiorno, in its first release, offers a set of key automated...(read more)

ASP.NET & Web Standards

2008-05-09T22:38:00Z

Aggiorno is an add-in for Visual Studio 2005/2008 that can swallow horrible non-validating markup and help you make an ASP.NET site web standards compliant with little effort. With Aggiorno web developers can improve their ASP.NET or HTML sites by making them comply with the latest web standards and incorporating the latest technology trends. This will immediately mean increased productivity and immediate business value. Beta 1 has just been released, so you might want to give it a try and send some...(read more)

VB Runtime NOT in next Windows

2008-04-30T19:44:00Z

Here is an excerpt from an article that Greg DeMichillie wrote on Directions on Microsoft April Edition: "The planned follow-on release to Windows Vista, code-named Windows 7, will not include the Visual Basic 6.0 (VB 6) runtime libraries, Microsoft has begun informing customers. This sets a timeframe for the final end of support for the runtime." As we have informed on several occasion in this Blog, Microsoft is performing all the normal steps to retire a technology from market. Visual...(read more)

April 8th 2008 and the end of Visual Basic 6 Support

2008-04-08T21:04:00Z

The date has arrived Visual Basic 6 leaves Extended support today.

Rob Helm recently wrote on "Directions on Microsoft": "Some organizations will let support lapse on the VB6 development environment, gambling that any serious problems in the VB6 environment has already been discovered" Additionally, Rob adds: "... organizations remaining loyal to VB6 applications will have to make increasingly heroic efforts to keep those applications running as their IT environments change."

Organizations that GAMBLE with their business continuity, IT professionals that need to make HEROIC efforts to keep applications running! Don't you believe that maintaining an IT organization supporting a business is already enough of an effort to add to the mix unsupported applications?

Do you plan to be a GAMBLING HERO or is it about time to consider ways out of Visual Basic 6?

Well this might be just the right time. ArtinSoft is about to release a new version of the Visual Basic Upgrade companion. The effort required to migrate has been reduced even further and it now makes more sense than ever to automatically upgrade your applications to C# or VB.NET.

Have you been procrastinating the decision to move? Act now!!

Aggiorno is coming out of stealth mode: www.aggiorno.com

2008-01-14T23:47:00Z

Happy 2008!

During last year, ArtinSoft has also been working on a new product that we called Aggiorno ( www.aggiorno.com ). Aggiorno is a Visual Studio add-in designed to increase the productivity of web developers. Aggiorno helps developers with a broad range of topics like web standards, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Accessibility, XHTML, ASP.NET, etc.

If you want to know more about aggiorno you can visit our new web site or the official blog: www.aggiorno.com\blog .

In this blog, I will continue to discuss Visual Basic Upgrades and its implications. By the way, customers are increasingly getting more excited about the speed and safety of migrations vs rewrites.

2008 is the final warning to move VB6 applications to .NET

2007-09-27T17:51:00Z

Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, recently answered the question "Do the new releases of the Microsoft platform have an impact on the issue of upgrading applications from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET?" with the quote that is the title of this post.

He said that the new platform updates really do not have an impact and that you should not wait any longer to move. He emphasized that after the end of support date for VB6 the support will only be through a special support contract with Microsoft that typically is "very onerous" and increasing every year.

Additionally, Rob Helm mentioned something that I had not noticed. Did you know the name of Visual Basic .NET is now officially only "Visual Basic"? Definetely another sign pointing at the future!

Microsoft improves compatibility libraries for VB 6.0: Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs 2.0

2007-09-24T18:06:00Z

Microsoft recently started to distribute a new version of the Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs.

Link to Download details: Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs 2.0

Notably, the routines that are included help with the automatic Upgrade/Migration of VB6 to .NET. From the MSDN web site:

" Overview

The new Line and Shape controls included in this version of the Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs are a set of three graphical controls that enable you to draw lines, ovals, and rectangles on forms and containers at design time making it much easier to enhance the look of your user interface. These new shape controls also provide events such as click and double-click allowing developers to respond and interact with end users.
The Printer Compatibility Library allows projects that used the Printer and Printers Collection in Visual Basic 6.0 to be upgraded without having to re-write your printing logic. By simply adding a reference to the library, declaring a Printer and making a few minor syntax changes, your project will be able to print using the Printers collection and Printer object as it did in Visual Basic 6.0. This version adds a new Write method to the Printer object which allows you to print text without a forced carriage return similar to the semicolon syntax used by Print method in Visual Basic 6.0.
The PrintForm component is designed to bring back the ability to easily print a Windows Form. With this the new PrintForm component you can once again layout the Windows Form exactly as you want it and allow your users to print the form as a quick report."

I'd like to relate this post with the one I did a few days ago related to performance (http://blogs.artinsoft.net/fzoufaly/archive/2007/0... ). In the previous post I was arguing about the use of the VB6 Compat library from .NET applications. Basically, I was arguing that the VB Compatibility library is written and distributed by Microsoft and therefore users should not be afraid to use it in their programs. TThe same goes with the power pack Microsoft is now releasing. The power pack contains a number of functions that are not directly addressed by the basic .NET framework but that are widely used and requested by VB programmers. So what is the right solution? Well, program them in .NET!!! I mean, is there another way to provide functionality that is not by programming it? Again, don't be afraid of using these routines more than you would be of any control you use in your app. And also, do not worry about the performance hit!!

Will your VB6 application continue to work on Vista?

2007-09-19T16:19:00Z

Microsoft is committed to support the vb6 runtime environment on Vista. However they will not continue to support the IDE: the development environment is not officially supported by Microsoft on Vista.

More detailed information can be found at: VBRUN and ftponline

Additionally, do not forget to also verify the support of your third party controls. Are they being supported by their manufacturer?

Many companies have already moved or are in the process to upgrade their Visual Basic Applications to .NET. However, many others are procrastinating their decision. Which type are you? Dont'you think it is time to move yet? What are you waiting for?

Performance of migrated VB6 applications to .NET

2007-09-13T21:34:00Z

A common question when upgrading VB6 applications to .NET is regarding the performance of the application.

The short answer is that the migrated app typically performs as good as the original application. Let's dive into a couple of common issues that customers typically worry about:

1) the use of the VB6 compatibility classes in .NET: First of all, I believe this is a very bad namespace name! Everytime you hear compatibility library you think about performance. However, in this case, all the classes in the compatibility library are implemented in .NET. They are included just to simplify the maintainability of the code. The functionality that they provide is not directly provided by .NET, therefore, the correct way of implementing it is to just program it in .NET which is exactly what the compat classes do. NO performance penalty here! In addition, these classes are part of the .NET framework, thay are supported by Microsoft and they will continue to be supported for the forseable future! If there is a function in there that you want to use it, just do it!

2) COM Interop: The VB Upgrade Wizard generates primary assemblies for the COM component that are referenced from VB6. This is of course the fastest way to communicate with them from .NET. Now, typically, COM components are black boxes that presumably execute non trivial functionality. This means that typically the time spent by the execution of the COM component is orders of magnitude larger than the time spent in the calling of the component from .NET. Therefore the performance impact is negligible. This is not true of course if the COM interface is very chatty as you will have to go through the primary assembly overhead many times.

The reason to eliminate COM interop is normally not one of performance. You want to eliminate COM components for maintainability reasons, for deployment reasons or to take advantage of newer versions of the components. If you just want to maintain the same functionality COM interop does not present a performance situation.

In summary and reinforcing the introductory statement a converted application from Visual Basic 6 to .NET typically performs in the same way as the original one.

Have you had a different experience? Let me know!

Good list of resources for VB6 Migrations from Microsoft's Peter Ty

2007-09-12T20:36:00Z

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

BANAMEX signs automatic VB6 migration contract with ArtinSoft

2007-09-12T19:31:00Z

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

ArtinSoft soluciones de migracion automatica de software

2007-09-12T19:26:00Z

Link to ArtinSoft – soluciones de migración de software

ArtinSoft just lunched its web site for the spanish market and specifically for the Mexican market.

Testing Upgraded Applications

2007-09-04T00:12:26Z

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

Upgrading VB6 to .NET – migration guide FAQ: 13 Chapters available

2007-05-25T21:28:41Z

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!