Goto 100 - Development with Visual Basic : Visual Basic 2005

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 :-)

Feedback appreciated on draft screencast on VB6 and the options to move to .NET

Eric Nelson — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:04:52 GMT

I am working with partners to pull together guidelines, resources and special promotions on tools to help UK companies with VB6 make the right choice around moving (or not) to .NET. This will happen early in 2009. There will be a new landing page with the information and on that page will be a link to a 10minute overview screencast. I have created this "draft". Would welcome folks comments.

P.S. It is a draft because it contains some glitches, some odd sound and I sound a little bored at times :-) I'm also not as succinct as I would have liked :-)

Comparing CodeArchitects VB Migration Partner with our Free Upgrade Wizard

Eric Nelson — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:47:57 GMT

One of the companies I am currently working with is CodeArchitects and more specifically Francesco Balena. Francesco has deep knowledge on all things VB which he (thankfully) decided to transfer into the form of a VB6 migration tool – VB Migration Partner.

I have had lots of feedback over the years on our free Upgrade Wizard – much of it bad when dealing with large projects. I am told the wizard appears to be fine for smaller projects but is “overwhelmed” when it is asked to tackle large enterprise class applications with several hundred thousand LOC. For this reason companies with large investments in VB6 have turned to companies such as Artinsoft and more recently CodeArchitects.

However I have never seen a detailed comparison of what improvement you might expect. Which is where this great summary from Francesco comes in.

The top level message – the CodeArchitects tool run at least 4 times faster and had 5 times fewer compilation errors – and with the use of pragmas will be fully functional once the migration tool completes unlike the free wizard which will often raise errors at runtime. Very sweet.

Upgrading VB6 applications – a moment to reflect :-)

Eric Nelson — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:36:25 GMT

I’ve now spent a bit of time with the book ”Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005”, so what are my thoughts about it? The good news is it remains a comprehensive and valuable resource for anyone planning to move their VB6 applications to .NET. However it is worth remembering that:

It focuses on upgrading rather than interoperating (Covered as Reuse in my earlier post on Rewrite vs Migrate vs Reuse vs Replace). It was written prior to the development of the Interop Forms Toolkit which makes combining VB6 and .NET much easier.
It doesn’t cover any .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5 topics – nor Visual Studio 2008.

ASP to ASP.NET

Eric Nelson — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:41:12 GMT

Visual Basic migration to .NET includes:

VB6 rich client migration – which represents the majority of migration projects I have seen
ASP to ASP.NET migration – aka vbscript migration
Access migration – aka vba migration (although Access migration often initially involves just moving the data onto SQL Server, retaining the Access UI)
Some other edge conditions – such as VB6 WebClasses

I thought I would have a look and see what resources are currently available to help with migrating ASP to ASP.NET. A good starting point is the migration area on the ASP.NET Developer Center. There is also an ASP to ASP.NET Migration Assistant, but (unless I’ve missed something) it targets ASP.NET 1.1 and not ASP.NET 2.0, so you’d have some work to do if you wanted to make use of the latest version of .NET. Regrettably the migration site for ASP to ASP.NET is looking a little neglected in other areas as well with a number of broken links. Perhaps this site is allowed to “decay” as “all” ASP to ASP.NET migration has already taken place as ASP.NET offered many significant benefits. Certainly I have no companies left that have pure ASP in their solution - at least that is what they told me :-)

In case you were wondering, there was no ASP.NET 3.0. The .NET Framework 3.0 was focused on WPF, WCF and WF and did nothing in the area of ASP.NET. There is ASP.NET 3.5 though, shipping with .NET Framework 3.5 and targeted by Visual Studio 2008.

By the way, if you did use VB6 WebClasses to build your web interface then you’ll find that the VB6 Upgrade Wizard in Visual Studio will handle the conversion to ASP.NET for you, giving you a choice of target framework.

Functional Equivalence vs Application Advancement (and Vertical vs Horizontal)

Eric Nelson — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:10:22 GMT

These are a couple of useful terms I’ve picked up from the ”Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005” guide (I really need an acronym to refer to this book!). They refer to two stages of the upgrade process: Functional equivalence means that your .NET application has the same functionality as your VB6 application and the recommendation is that you should get to this stage before you start working on application advancement. Application advancement is when you start adding new or improved functionality, and where you can start to benefit from all the features of the .NET Framework. In many cases I see teams are asked to deliver both in parallel (as I discussed previously) and the end result is at best a lot of late nights and at worst, nothing is ultimately delivered.

Another useful concept discussed in the guide is vertical and horizontal upgrades. A vertical upgrade tackles a vertical slice through all the layers of an application, while a horizontal upgrade deals with a single layer of the application at a time. Which approach makes sense will depend on the architecture of your application. Many teams I have engaged understand the benefits of working with a vertical slice but it is interesting to see that in many cases they choose a poor or incomplete vertical slice. Common mistakes I have seen when teams scope the vertical slice include:

A vertical slice which fails to include reporting and archiving – leaving key implementation details until later
A vertical slice which fails to consider data volumes – the vertical slice is run against virtually empty tables, which masks significant issues with the implementation
A vertical slice which fails to consider concurrency – the vertical slice is never run within the context of simulated load, again masking significant issues
A vertical slice which fails to include interop with existing systems – despite interop being a key requirement of the solution

There are plenty of other examples – but failure to consider the above four can easily lead to significant difficulties later on in a migration project.

Estimating the effort to move to .NET

Eric Nelson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:30:46 GMT

Software estimation is difficult at the best of times (which is why I recommend Software Estimation Demystified), but estimating how long an upgrade will take to an environment you’re not familiar with is going to be hard to get right. There’s a utility accompanying the “Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005” guide to help you out.

If you want to have a peek at some sample output based on the old FM Stocks 2000 application then download and install this, then have a look in the ‘Assessment Reports’ folder it creates. The file MainReport.xls contains the upgrade cost estimates. (Warning this tool only works with Excel 2003 – you can download the viewer.)

P.S. As an aside – I really loved the simplicity of FM Stocks, especially when you recall the alternative sample was Duwamish.

Moving between Visual Basic and C# syntax

Eric Nelson — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:28:53 GMT

There are several tools available to convert back and forth – but sometimes all you really need is a simple side by side comparison. It doesn’t include many of the latest features but it is a handy thing to have around if you are moving back and forth between the languages.

Q&A: Using both C# and Visual Basic .NET in the same Web Application

Eric Nelson — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:54:16 GMT

I get quite a random set of questions coming into my Inbox from folks I meet at events, conferences and through my blog. I thought it might be useful if I started sharing my answers when these come in. To start this off, I was asked:

“We have two .NET development teams after our company acquired a smaller company. The two team use different .NET languages. We are trying to bring together two web applications into one, what options do we have?”

This sounded like one of those “which language is best” and “how do we migrate” questions – but after some probing I realised the teams did not realise how easy it was to have both languages in the same application.

The ASP.NET App_Code folder is used to store source code which ASP.NET compiles at run time into an assembly. An assembly in .NET can only be created from a single language (ok – there are some workarounds – but don’t go there). However the good news is you can specify additional sub folders, in this example one for VB and one for C#. You do this in your web.config compilation section. Once done, simple place the code in the appropriate folder and ASP.NET does the rest.

   1: <compilation debug="false">   2:     <codeSubDirectories>   3:         <add directoryName="VBCode" />   4:         <add directoryName="CSCode" />   5:     </codeSubDirectories>   6: </compilation>

For more details check out the help :-)

New find – Visual Basic 2005 development blog

Eric Nelson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:12:05 GMT

It is 12am and I should be sleeping but I just stumbled across this blog site by Arsalan Tamiz focusing on VB 2005 development http://arsalantamiz.blogspot.com/. It appears to have been only going a few months but he has been very busy! Plenty for me to read through later this week. Enjoy!

Visual Basic and .NET Framework Versions

Eric Nelson — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:23:25 GMT

Hi all, apologies for the pause in blogging. This is holiday season and I am … having plenty of holiday :-) (Which makes a nice change)

A couple of folks have asked me recently about Visual Basic versions and .NET Framework versions and how they tie up. I thought I would have a stab at a concept map to demonstrate the relationship.

Note that things got very different with the release of VB9. VB9 targets three versions of the framework and really brings to the fore the separation between the language/compiler and the runtime .NET Framework. What that means is new VB9 features (such as extension methods) will work just fine on a machine with only .NET Framework 2.0 (or 3.0) installed. Very clever stuff and one of the reasons VB9 (and VS2008) is the right choice even if your world is about .NET Framework 2.0.

NB: VB9 = Visual Basic 2008, VB8 = Visual Basic 2005, VB7 = Visual Basic.NET, VB6 = “the good old days” :-)

Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition - #1 in the UK

Eric Nelson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:04:31 GMT

I remembered Paul Vick (VB team) spoke to Scott end of 2008 – and as part of that Paul mentioned four interesting metrics.

Visual Basic is the #1 .NET language (as reported by Forrester Research)
Visual Basic is the #1 downloaded and #1 registered Express Edition (topping the #2 position by 20%)
Visual Basic is the #1 MSDN language dev center and blog in terms of traffic
The Visual Basic Team blog is in the top 1% in readership of all MS bloggers

I am not surprised – but I was curious about the situation in the UK. I finally found some numbers. Yep – Visual Basic 2008 Express (and 2005 for that matter) is also #1 in the UK. Way to go!

C# and Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll

Eric Nelson — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:48:58 GMT

As I dig into Visual Basic a bit further I to realise what I have been missing as a (lapsed) C# developer. A great example is some of the goodness wrapped up in Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll. It is a standard part of the .NET Framework and… is absolutely available to C# developers. Scott calls out one great example – creating a single instance Windows Forms application which makes use of Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.WindowsFormsApplicationBase.

Converting from C# to Visual Basic .NET

Eric Nelson — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:15:00 GMT

First Created: Wednesday 23rd July 2008
Updated: Thursday 24th July 2008 - added Telerik

I have been playing with C# to Visual Basic converters. There are a few around and I have included the best I came across. However right now there is one clear winner if you want to work with the new language features introduced in Visual Studio 2008 – that is Instant VB from Tangible Software.

Notes:

I have only had a quick play with these – enough to know they have a place in helping move code over from C#
I have ruled out a few others I found as they looked very dated
Most DO NOT understand the new language features (such as LINQ) included in .NET Framework 3.5
Tangible Instant VB does understand the new language extensions. I am using the demo install with decent results
I hope SharpDevelop 3 will also support the new language extensions
IMHO – we should include a converter “in the box” integrated into the IDE … ho hum…

Commerical

Tangible Software - download
- Instant VB http://www.tangiblesoftwaresolutions.com/Product_Details/Instant_VB.htm
  - Demo allows 100 line code snippet
- Instant C# http://www.tangiblesoftwaresolutions.com/Product_Details/Instant_CSharp.htm
Octopus .NET Translator http://www.remotesoft.com/octopus/
- This one needs your code to compiler first :-)
- Online demo for code snippets – but not as useful as others

Online Converters

DeveloperFusion – based on converter in SharpDevelop
- C# to Visual Basic http://www.developerfusion.com/utilities/convertcsharptovb.aspx
- Visual Basic to C# http://www.developerfusion.com/utilities/convertvbtocsharp.aspx
ASP Alliance http://www.aspalliance.com/aldotnet/examples/translate.aspx
Kamalpatels converter http://www.kamalpatel.net/ConvertCSharp2VB.aspx
Telerik http://converter.telerik.com/ (tx quimbo)

Downloadable

SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C#, Visual Basic .NET which includes two way conversion http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx
- Currently V3 is in Beta for .NET Framework 3.5
- V2 is available for .NET Framework 2.0
Kamalpatels converter http://www.kamalpatel.net/Downloads/ConvertCSharp2VB_Offline_Tool.zip (one exe and dll to xcopy)

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 :-)