Last week, a developer from a company that is evaluating a trial version of the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion sent us an email, asking if they should use the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Upgrade Assessment Tool and the Code Advisor. Perhaps someone else has a similar doubt, so I thought it may be a good idea to share our response here.
First of all, let's remember that we are talking about three separate --and different-- tools:
- Visual Basic Upgrade Companion (VBUC): this is ArtinSoft’s Visual Basic 6.0 to VB.NET/C# migration tool. Basically, you use this tool to convert your VB6 code to .NET.
- Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Upgrade Assessment Tool: this tool was written for Microsoft by ArtinSoft, and can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=10c491a2-fc67-4509-bc10-60c5c039a272&DisplayLang=en. The purpose of this tool is to generate a detailed report of the characteristics of your VB6 code, giving you an idea of the size and complexity of the code from a migration standpoint. The tool itself does not make any modification of conversion of the source code.
- Code Advisor: this tool is also provided by Microsoft, free of charge, and can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a656371a-b5c0-4d40-b015-0caa02634fae&displaylang=en. The Code Advisor analyzes your VB6 source code and looks for particular migration issues within the code. Each issue is marked with a code comment that suggests how to modify the VB6 code to avoid the problem.
The purposes of the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Upgrade Assessment Tool and the Code Advisor are different, so it is recommended that you use both of them. However, it is important to note that the Code Advisor was designed for users that plan to migrate with the Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard (the conversion tool that comes with Visual Studio .NET), and since VBUC has a greater migration coverage, some of the issues that will be flagged by the Code Advisor will be fixed automatically by VBUC. For a detailed discussion on those issues, please refer to my article “Visual Basic Upgrade Companion vs. Code Advisor”: http://www.artinsoft.com/VB-Upgrade-Companion-vs-CodeAdvisor.aspx