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UK Visual Basic 6.0 Migration Case Studies – 800K LOC moved to C#

Eric Nelson — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:28:47 GMT

I have worked on and off with UK company Vertex for 13 years and like many large companies, some of their applications contain code that I first saw 13 years back – Visual Basic 6.0 code. Recently they managed to ensure compliance and business continuity by upgrading not one, but two of their mission-critical applications from Visual Basic 6.0 to .NET using a customized version of the Artinsoft Visual Basic Upgrade Companion (VBUC).

The stories behind both projects can be found at:

You might also want to check out this central resource we pulled together.

blogs.msdn.com/ericnel has moved to IUpdateable

Eric Nelson — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:54:59 GMT

My main blog (started back in 2004) has now moved to http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/ as described here and will have a healthy number of VB posts. I also managed to grab http://iupdateable.com/ :-)

Results of Visual Basic Survey (UK)

Eric Nelson — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:49:30 GMT

In January we created a survey to understand how folks were using Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic .NET in the UK. This survey was sent out to individuals we “suspected” had Visual Basic 6.0 heritage but it was also widely advertised through the UK MSDN Flash to UK developers.

We got plenty of great data and I wanted to share the interesting bits more widely as I think as developers we are always curious about what our peers are up to. Well, I am :-)

Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard vs 3rd Party Migration Tools

Eric Nelson — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:45:56 GMT

[If you are UK based, check out www.microsoft.com/uk/vbmigration for more information ]

A question I get asked a lot is “Are 3rd party migration tools really that much better than the free upgrade wizard from Microsoft?”

Lets me be perfectly candid. Whilst I always recommend people should try the free wizard first, it has many shortcomings. Too many IMHO. That said, for some folks it will be perfectly “good enough” to enable a successful migration from VB6 to Visual Basic .NET. However for large, complex VB6 applications you would likely be much better served by a 3rd party tool.

The two main companies in this space have each created a comparison with the Upgrade Wizard which I would definitely recommend you check out.

Code Architects VB Migration Partner

Code Architects have a paper which includes a detailed analysis of the output of their VB Migration Partner compared with the Upgrade Wizard on a number of Open SourceVB6 projects and a look at how well each tool handles compatibility issues as identified by VB Project Analyzer from Aivosto. VB Migration Partner was:

About four times faster
Produced fives times fewer compilation errors in the final .NET code
Able to fully or partially handle 43 of the 49 compatibility issues that are left unresolved by the Upgrade Wizard

Artinsoft Visual Basic Upgrade Companion

Artinsoft have created a detailed whitepaper looking at the many differences between the Wizard and their Visual Basic Upgrade Companion. They are sometimes very big differences – such as how the tool handles 3rd party controls. The paper also includes lots of great code snippets which allow you to directly compare the two tools.

e.g. Error Handling

Original VB6 Source Code:

Public Sub ErrorHandling(arg1 As Integer) 
On Error GoTo ErrorHandler 
    Dim var1 As Integer 
    var1 = 1 / arg1 
    MsgBox var1 
    MsgBox arg1 
    Exit Sub 
ErrorHandler: 
    MsgBox Err.Description, , "Error" 
End Sub

The Upgrade Wizard:

Public Sub ErrorHandling(ByRef arg1 As Short) 
On Error GoTo ErrorHandler 
  Dim var1 As Short 
  var1 = 1 / arg1 
  MsgBox(var1) 
  MsgBox(arg1) 
  Exit Sub 
ErrorHandler:  
  MsgBox(Err.Description,  , "Error") 
End Sub

But the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion uses Try/Catch:

Public Sub ErrorHandling(ByRef arg1 As Integer) 
Try  
  Dim var1 As Integer 
  var1 = 1 / arg1 
  MessageBox.Show(CStr(var1), Application.ProductName) 
  MessageBox.Show(CStr(arg1), Application.ProductName)  
  15 
Catch excep As System.Exception       
  MessageBox.Show(excep.Message, "Error") 
End Try 
End Sub

Do check out the paper, especially the many code samples.

New article on extending VB6.0 applications with the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0

Eric Nelson — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:24:32 GMT

I just wanted to swiftly share some useful links if you choose to extend a Visual Basic 6.0 application including a new article I commissioned in the UK – which turned out rather good.

Firstly links to the toolkit download and some of the best existing articles.

The Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 which you need to download
Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 Tutorial on Code Project which includes an example of using a WPF control inside a Windows Form as part of a Visual Basic 6.0 application
Using the Toolkit with Visual Foxpro – yep, you can use the toolkit with VFP9
Using C# with the Interop Forms Toolkit and useful blog post from the team

Which leads me to the new article on using the Interop Forms Toolkit. This is a detailed, code heavy look at using the Interop Forms Toolkit which we are getting some great feedback on.

It covers:

Installation and setup
Interop Forms
Interop UserControls
Sharing data between managed and unmanaged code
Debugging
Deployment
And recommendations on using it

Enjoy.

P.S. I must admit I have never liked the name of this kit as it doesn’t really describe what it does - IMHO. I therefore often describe it as

The Add VB.NET Forms and Controls to your VB6 Application Toolkit

However that does it a disservice. It is broader than that. How about

The Add VB.NET or C# Forms and Controls to your VB6 Application Toolkit

Or even more descriptively

The Add VB.NET or C# Forms and Controls to your VB6 or VFP9 Application Toolkit

The Add .NET Forms and Controls written in any .NET language to any COM based Application but it is much easier to use for VB6 and VB.NET Toolkit

Ok I give in, Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 it is :-)

Secure your Visual Basic 6.0 investment with Microsoft .NET

Eric Nelson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:36:16 GMT

[This is currently a UK only initiative but you will still find a lot of useful information on the new site and I know our partners are happy to engage worldwide]

Over the last couple of months I have been working with Sarah in my group to pull together something which hopefully will help the many companies in the UK who continue to have a significant investment in Visual Basic 6.0 - and we did it with virtually no budget thanks to some great help and encouragement from Artinsoft, Code Architects and Avanade.

Check out what we created if you are based in the United Kingdom and still have Visual Basic 6.0 applications running your company. Some of the highlights:

A great prize draw to win a free copy of a migration tool from Artinsoft or Code Architects (We have several to give away)
Great offers from our partners. How about a entry level great migration tool for just £199 or 25% off a full blown enterprise class tool
An attempt to summarise the five options you can take along with a 10 minute screencast by myself explaining the five options (and you can tell I had a cold when I recorded it!)
Links to the best resources to find out more
And a a brand new detailed article on the Interop Forms Toolkit which enables .NET forms and controls to be easily mixed with Visual Basic 6.0 forms and controls.

P.S. The web page does have one or two “bugs” – but we will get them fixed on the next refresh.

Survey on the usage of Visual Basic 6.0 in UK companies

Eric Nelson — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:42:51 GMT

[Survey is live from January 21st to January 26th, 2009]

I have been working with my marketing colleague Sarah to create a survey to better understand the current reliance on Visual Basic 6.0 in the United Kingdom and what plans companies have to move to .NET (or not!).

The survey is a little over 20 questions but should only take you a minute or two to complete. As an incentive we have a number of four day Visual Basic 2008 training courses as prizes worth £1640 – very nice.

Remember it is just as important for you to complete the survey even if you have no Visual Basic 6.0 applications left in your company. Thanks in advance and remember, “best guesses” are good enough.

Complete the Visual Basic 6.0 Survey

Note: The prize is training in the United Kingdom.

Anybody for some free (and clever!) Visual Basic 2008 training?

Eric Nelson — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:00:59 GMT

In the UK we are working with InnerWorkings to create a great offer of training to UK developers. We still have some stuff to sort out but I am hopeful that we will be able to share the details of this very early in 2009. In my previous depth role we used InnerWorking successfully to help early adopters get up to speed with the core technologies which we then built on with our own labs, briefings and workshops. We were very impressed with the inventive format they use and the quality of the training.

Essentially the training is broken down into a number of coding challenges which you must perform inside Visual Studio on supplied skeleton projects with the help of relevant information. Once you think you have it right, their program checks your solution for correctness. Very sweet. Above that there is also reporting - making it easy for an organisation to role it out and understand how developers are progressing through the training, opening up the possibility of prizes etc.

The great news is my colleagues in the US have already created a worldwide offer which allows you to try out this format for free. You can select from three samples:

New Features in C# 3.0 (1 hour)
New Features in VB 9.0 (1 hour)
LINQ to SQL (1 hour)

Even better news - check out their online catalog and use the coupon code IWDEFY to claim a 10% discount on all items in your shopping cart.

NB: For the UK we are aiming to put together a larger offering - albeit for a limited number of folks. Watch this space.

Interview with Richard Warnett of Financial Objects on their decision to go with Visual Basic .NET

Eric Nelson — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:38:32 GMT

A big thanks to Richard for taking the time to do this. I have known Financial Objects for many years and have been impressed with how they have successfully taken forward their VB6 investment onto .NET using Visual Basic .NET.

I would love to do a few more of these with UK companies who have happily made the switch from VB6 to .NET or have selected Visual Basic over C# for .NET development. Please do contact me if you would be happy to do this. Thanks.

Richard, could you just say a few words about your role in Financial Objects?

I am chief architect and product director for our Microsoft platform retail banking solution: activebank. I also provide architectural and technology strategy support to other product teams as well as advising the board on technology matters. I have worked with the activebank solution for 14 years now and have followed Microsoft’s enterprise technologies and more importantly, Visual Basic, through that period. In my role I am concerned with the entire development lifecycle, including post-deployment support, which I believe brings a healthy dose of caution and realism when considering the adoption of new technologies, methodologies and approaches. We operate an on-shore / off-shore model for the development and support of this product and this arrangement has provided me with fantastic opportunities to focus on the processes as well as the nitty-gritty day-to-day technology of coding.

I understand that many of your products started out using Visual Basic 6 and earlier. When you decided to move to .NET did you consider also moving to C#?

We certainly considered all of the dishes that were on the Microsoft menu at the time .NET was introduced. We were fortunate to be working with Microsoft under a Premier Support for Developers agreement (PSfD, now Microsoft Partner Advantage – MSPA) at the time, which gave us privileged access to those in the know and for us to be able to have frank and open discussions about the variances between the languages.

The demonstration of the MSIL generated out of the languages was enough for me to understand that we would not be making a technical compromise by choosing to stick with Visual Basic, and so we were free to make the decision on the basis of what suited our organisation best.

Given that we had a large and capable team of Visual Basic developers, a large repository of Visual Basic source code that needed to be supported, and a healthy backlog of work to deliver, the decision to move ahead with Visual Basic was a fairly trivial one for us!

Do you have any regrets about deciding to go with Visual Basic .NET?

I regret that Microsoft did not do more to make VB.NET appear cooler and sexier to developers than C#. The result has been years of developers jumping to the conclusion that C# is the more a able and comprehensive language than VB when that is so clearly not the case. For us, this meant that we had some casualties in the early days in terms of experienced developers jumping ship to work with C#.

But, other than that minor gripe, no real regrets at all.

What approach have you taken to moving Visual Basic 6 applications onto .NET? Did you create or buy any tools to help you?

We were fairly masochistic about it. We saw the re-engineering to .NET as an opportunity to make some worthwhile advances with our application architecture and development processes, rather than taking a sausage-machine approach to getting onto .NET. Consequently, we built a new application framework from the ground up; we re-designed our use of modelling in the development process; and we produced the patterns we needed to be able to integrate both new .NET components and existing COM component in the same deployment.

What would be your advice for a company with a significant investment in VB6?

“Don’t Panic!” I feel that there has been an growing amount of uncertainty perpetuating around our industry, and consequently among our customers, regarding the implications of operating a strategic solution that may be built in part or completely from VB6 code. This has resulted in some “from the hip” demands that software vendors immediately address the “problem” of supplying a solution that is built with an “unsupported” development product.

My advice is that anyone responsible for a strategic solution that is in part or whole VB6 must now set themselves a target as part of their product roadmap to engineer out the remaining VB6 components. They must not feel pressured into removing the VB6 code in any radical way, though. They have time to do it the way that works best for them, their team and their customer. The old adage “don’t bite off more than you can chew” applies here: deal with the re-engineering of the VB6 code as a requirement in its own right. Don’t be tempted to re-architect from the ground up right now (unless that was on the roadmap already and you can afford to put product development on hold for some time).

And finally, what new technologies from Microsoft are you most looking forward to using in the future?

Visual Basic 10. Visual Basic 11. Visual Basic 12...

Entity framework is looking like a ‘worthy of a prod’ type of technology, so I’m looking to get that at least into a lab environment to see what it can do for us in more detail, along with the associated goodies like ADO.NET data services. Team Foundation Server, while not really in the ‘new’ category, is still in the process of being adopted across all of the projects and so I am working to get that up and running across the board. As a distributed development shop it clearly has lots to offer us. The 2008s (Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio) are all foundations of the work we have in the development shop now that will be deployed in the next product release. Business Intelligence is an area that we are interested in right now and can see that the current offerings from Microsoft in this area could help us to deliver some smart solutions. Lastly, we care keeping an eye on the ‘user experience’ space to work out what improvements we can make to our user interfaces without just adding bling for the sake of it.

There’s lots going on and it’s a good industry to be involved in as much as ever, if not more so.

Note: We did this interview several weeks back and for some reason it “escaped” my Inbox into a sub-folder without ever making it onto this blog. I only just rediscovered it whilst unsuccessfully trying to find it on this blog! Sorry.

A very good showing of VB developers

Eric Nelson — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:35:11 GMT

As folks should know, as of July I stopped doing any demos in C# (pretty much) and switched to Visual Basic .NET – the simple reason being I know at every event we attend we have a large contingent of VB developers that we make sit through C# demo after demo – for which I apologise. I think last Wednesday was a great example. Mike and I were delivering a session to customers of QBS. Mike went with C# and I with VB. I asked for a show of hands at the start of my session and…50% were VB developers which gave me a warm feeling inside :-)

FYI I was covering “all things data” in my session – Entity Framework, LINQ, Sync Services, Data Services, SSDS etc. Plenty of links to choose from if you would like to find out more.

Updated the list of events I will be attending/delivering sessions

Eric Nelson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:36:07 GMT

Just a quick note to say I have updated my “Eric will be appearing” page. October is looking busy :-)

2nd MSDN Event Reading http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/bb905504.aspx for all MSDN events
7th MSDN Event Manchester
14th MSDN Event Birmingham
16th MSDN Event Edinburgh
22nd MSDN Event Bristol
23rd MSDN Event Exeter
24th MSDN Event London
8th, 9th, 10th Future of Web Apps in London http://london2008.futureofwebapps.com/ (likely)

Oh – and expect me to be using Visual Basic in every one of them (with a drop of C# now and then)

UK MSDN events now scheduled

Eric Nelson — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:21:24 GMT

Topics have been chosen, venues confirmed and details posted on our events site. We will be showing up at 6 cities through Sept and October with a lot of the content focused on Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. Me – I will be delivering the “data bit” – in Visual Basic :-) I liked the tag line we went for:

“Service Pack? We’re calling it a Service Pack? Are you kidding??!?!”

P.S. We do also hope to get up to Scotland in October.

MSDN Event - Rich Internet Applications with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
- Location: Reading
- Date: 2 September 2008
MSDN Event: Rich Internet Applications with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
- Location: London
- Date: 4 September 2008
MSDN Event: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
- Location: Reading
- Date: 2 October 2008
MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
- Location: Manchester
- Date: 7 October 2008
MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
- Location: Birmingham
- Date: 14 October 2008
MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
- Location: Bristol
- Date: 22 October 2008
MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?
- Location: Exeter
- Date: 23 October
MSDN Roadshow Re-Run

Location: London
Date: 24 October 2008

Visual Basic samples for WPF book - Applications = Code + Markup

Eric Nelson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:34:53 GMT

Once again, Ged Meads work on WPF catches my eye. A big thanks to Ged, Young Joo and Evan Lim for converting the C# samples over to Visual Basic for Petzolds book on WPF (Only 3 left in stock at Amazon UK - lets get those sold as well - but be warned, the style/approach of this book may not appeal to everyone).

You can find the samples for all 31 chapters on the MSDN Code Gallery at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/petzoldsamplevb. This was a great initiative - I would love to know of any more examples.

P.S. Lets see if we can drive the downloads up - 1320 as of 17th July 2008 :-)

40% off Visual Basic .NET and C# Books ... (UK)

Eric Nelson — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:56:54 GMT

Visual Basic 6 developer moving to .NET - you need a good book! http://www.microsoft-press.co.uk/hellodotnet

I have been looking for ways to help the Visual Basic 6 folks transition to .NET. Paul in my old ISV team suggested a discount of Microsoft Press VB books. He kicked off a conversation with MS Press in the UK who were extremely keen to help and I have been working with them to get a new landing page in place. We have arranged for 40% off two Visual Basic 2008 books and a C# book (well...some will move to C#).

The books are:

Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step

Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step 3rd Edition

Programming Windows Services with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008

Head over to http://www.microsoft-press.co.uk/hellodotnet if you would like to find out more.

P.S. I will write up a short review of the first two books. NOTE - the two Step by Step books are very different. The Visual Basic book is for someone brand new to .NET and aims to teach the basics. The C# is much more detailed.

P.P.S. I am hoping to have some free copies to give out - should know very soon how many etc.

Building a "brand new application" - WPF, ADO.NET Data Services, LINQ to Entities with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

Eric Nelson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:19:00 GMT

At the end of June I run workshops with 2 ISVs both looking to completely re-develop their applications. One is entirely VB6, the other a combination of VB6 with C++.

The beauty of "starting from scratch" with a one to two year development plan is you can take a hard look at the latest technologies from Microsoft - and there are a lot of them! As a result, both application architectures at a high level ended up looking pretty similar.

The following links should help those teams drill in further - and maybe you?

In both cases we went with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 as our base level technology (NB: SP1 is really a feature pack)

Presentation Tier

Rich Client for power/frequent users, typically inside the firewall with the need to be occasionally connected
- Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5
  - In June we released the Composite Application Block for WPF
- ADO.NET Synchronisation Services to a local database cache
- Workflow Foundation for ....errr...workflow :-)
- Communication to middle tier via HTTP/REST
Browser Client for occasional users, typically outside the firewall
- Silverlight 2.0
- ASP.NET AJAX
- Workflow Foundation

Middle Tier

Serving both types of clients. Ability to scale out.
- ADO.NET Data Services - exposing entities and operations
  - SP1 Documentation for Data Services
- ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities - delivering object relational mapping
  - SP1 Documentation for Entity Framework
- Workflow Foundation
- Windows Communication Foundation to drive and respond to external systems
Note: We ruled out LINQ to SQL in favour of LINQ to Entities - however worth saying that in both cases we only needed to support SQL Server and therefore LINQ to SQL would be a valid alternative
- LINQ to SQL has shipped and N-tier development with it is nicely covered in the documentation and in Beths posts

Data Tier

Where we store all the data :-)
- SQL Server 2008
  - Extended via SPs, Triggers and Types using TSQL or CLR integration as appropriate

Blogs (sample of the best):

ADO.NET Team on Entity Framework http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/tags/Entity+Framework/default.aspx
ADO.NET Data Services Team http://blogs.msdn.com/astoriateam/
Sync Framework team http://blogs.msdn.com/sync/default.aspx
UK based Mike Taulty with some great content on ADO.NET Data Services, Entity Framework and Silverlight
Tim Sneath (ex UK) on all things WPF/Silverlight http://blogs.msdn.com/tims
Product group WPF site http://windowsclient.net/
Related - SQL Server Data Services http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/default.aspx

P.S. Both teams will be using Visual Basic 2008 :-) I thought you would like that one...