[NEW RELEASE] Version 1.22 is available to registered users

clock December 22, 2009 01:59

We have just released VB Migration Partner v. 1.22. In addition to fixing a few minor problems with several controls - including the PictureBox, CommonDialog, and ListBox controls - this new releases further improves the VB6Variant class (which now behaves closer and closer to the original VB6 Variant type) and the support for DBCS character sets (Japanese users take note).

The portion of the translation engine has been improved and omit to generates many unnecessary warnings. More specifically, all previous versions of VB Migration Partner emit the 0354 warning when assigning a Variant or Object variable to a scalar variable, as in this example:

   Dim source As Object
   Dim
dest As Integer
   ' some statements here

   ' ...

   ' UPGRADE_WARNING #0354: Unable to read default member of symbol 'source'. Consider using the GetDefaultMember6 helper method."
   dest = source

Starting with version 1.22, if source is a Variant variable, VB Migration Partner uses a more sophisticated algorithm and checks whether the variable is ever the target of an assignment by means of a Set keyword. If it isn't the case, then VB Migration Partner omits the 0354 warning, because the source variable can only contain a scalar value and the GetDefaultMember6 helper method is never necessary. This smart behavior dramatically decreases the number of generated warnings that you have to carefully check to ensure that the VB.NET version behaves like the original VB6 code. In a medium-sized migration project, this feature alone can save you one or two days of review work.

As usual, registered users will be alerted that a new version is available the next time they fire up VB Migration Partner.



[CASE STUDY] SIS-Evolution becomes official Microsoft Corp case study

clock December 14, 2009 03:42

I am very glad and proud to announce that Microsoft Corp just published a world-wide case study based on the successful SIS-EVOLUTION migration project, of course based on VB Migration Partner.

The migration was carried out by SIS, an Austrian software company who converted a mission-critical Visual Basic 6 application counting 950,000 lines of code (LOCs) in about 9 months. It is noteworthy that the total effort included software selection, code review and refactoring tasks that weren't directly related to the actual migration stage.

It is interesting what SIS found during the software selection stage and the reason why they chose VB Migration Partner:

SIS evaluated six products before choosing VB Migration Partner. To ensure an auto-mated migration to the greatest possible extent, SIS conducted an inventory of the existing code base, identified critical and “difficult” functions, and identified 25,000 lines of code to run through each con-version tool. “It took 2.5 hours to get a project that would compile and run using VB Migration Partner, and 13 hours with the closest competitor,” says Wiegele. “VB Migration Partner also required 50 percent less rework to precisely duplicate the UI of the old application.

Thanks to VB Migration Partner, each of the three developers working on the project was able to correctly migrate around 50K LOCs per month, a number that confirms VB Migration Partner as the most productive and cost-effective VB6 conversion tool on the market.

This excerpt has to do with Code Architects' tech support:

While VB Migration Partner can be customized for even greater levels of efficiency, it’s noteworthy that SIS achieved its results using a standard, noncustomized copy of our software,” says Francesco Balena, Chief Executive Officer at Code Architects. “Thanks to our extensive online documentation and knowledge base, the only technical support SIS required was handled through a half-dozen e-mails.

Here's one more quote from SIS's Otto Wiegele, which emphasizes that VB Migration Partner's ability to closely reproduce the VB6 user interface saved the customer a lot of time and money, because no retraining was necessary:

SIS was able to ensure that all Visual Basic–related methods and controls work identically in the new application. VB Migration Partner prevented the incidental intro-duction of subtle differences in the application’s look and feel, enabling the client to minimize retraining of the system’s 350 users.

You can read the entire case study here.