VB6 Upgrade Resources
I am running into many Visual Basic 6 developers that are contemplating the upgrade to the .NET platform. Some of these are independent software vendors that don't have the time or resources to learn the new platform and some are large enterprise customers that just need some guidance early on in the project life-cycle. I have accumulated some resources that I have been sending to developers in need of help. This page will be my ongoing reference list of Visual Basic 6 references that I have found to be valuable in getting started down the path of VB6 migration.
The place to go for all existing Visual Basic 6 developers is Visual Basic 6 Resource Center. This site contains resources on developing in Visual Basic 6 and upgrading to Visual Basic .NET.
This book can be downloaded for free or purchased. It's a rather large book (720 pages), so I was happy with purchasing it.
This is an introductory book for developers and can also be used by project managers. This book is available online for free and can still be purchased.
This tool may be used to analyze your Visual Basic 6.0 projects to determine what issues you will need to address to be able to upgrade. It also provides information about where to get help understanding each issue and the types of skills needed to address them.
This is a very detailed reference targeted at Visual Basic 6 developers that have very specific "how-to" questions on specific tasks/topics. One of the biggest problems I see with VB6 developers jumping into .NET projects is that they do not have the visibility into some of the newer features that .NET provides and as a result, end up spending lots of time rewriting /upgrading existing features can be addressed with features already in the .NET framework.
Interoperability
If your .NET application does need to integrate with existing COM components, the following resources are dedicated to interoperability between Visual Basic 6 application and .NET.
This document discusses wrapping existing COM objects for use during the migration. The document focuses on the ASP / ASP.NET migration scenario.
This document contains walk-through's on referencing COM objects from .NET, calling the Windows API from .NET, and how to call .NET components from Visual Basic 6 applications.
This toolkit allows you to upgrade your VB6 applications one form at a time (a phased upgrade). This actually allows upgraded/new .NET forms to run within the same process as the VB6 application.
Office as a Client
Something else to consider... Will your application benefit from integration with the Office platform? This may not be applicable to independent software vendors, because you cannot control the client software requirements. However, sometimes this is an ideal solution for the enterprise. Why?
- Do your users use Office as their primary application? If so, does it make sense to integrate application components into the Outlook interface?
- Do your end-users want an application that has functionality that is integrated seamlessly into Office?
- As a developer, do you want to focus on writing business logic--and not an interface or pluming?
If these answers are yes, then you may want to consider Visual Studio Tools for Office. Note that this is not Visual Basic for Applications.. This is a full-fledged .NET with support and access to the .NET framework from Office--which is a powerful combination.
