[NEW RELEASE] VB Migration Partner 1.33 is available

clock February 22, 2011 19:54

Less than three years after its debut, VB Migration Partner is such a mature and complete product that it's hard to add new features. For this reason, the new version comes as many as five months after the 1.32 version and can be considered as nothing more than a "maintainance build".

Among the few noteworthy new features is the AddAttribute pragma, which allows you to associate a .NET attribute with a program element (a class, a method, a variable, etc.). This attribute is especially useful to specify MarshalAs attributes for the elements of a Type structure in a way that is compliant with the convert-test-fix methodology, so that you don't have to manually modify the generated .NET code and can safely re-migrate the same piece of code over and over. (In previous versions, adding an attribute required some wizardry with the PostProcess pragma).

We have also fixed about 40 minor bugs, thus VB Migration Partner is more robust than ever. The complete list of additions and bug fixes can be found in the VERSION HISTORY.TXT file.

As usual, registered users will be notified of the new version (and will be brought to the download page) the next time they launch the software.



[CASE STUDY] Xcel Energy, USA

clock February 15, 2011 11:22

Xcel Energy recently used VB Migration Partner to migrate a VB6 application consisting of multiple projects for a total of 120,000 lines of code (LOCs). The migration project was a complex one, because of many constraints and requirements, such as the adoption of Rockford Lotcha's CSLA.NET framework, but our conversion software proved to be up to its reputation. In the words of our customer:

VB Migration Partner was able to correctly parse and convert all of the Forms and ActiveX controls to VB.NET. After analyzing the output and reviewing their on-line knowledge base (which is quite extensive), two pragmas were inserted to reduce the number of conversion errors to a handful in most of the programs. All of the forms could be edited without any further intervention. Grid controls that could not be converted were initially left as red rectangles. Within 2-days, all of the source code was cleaned up with no compiler errors.  This meant that the existing presentation layer could be converted from VS6 to VS2008 – so the VB Migration Partner option works very well as part of an overall approach.

120,000 LOCs were translated to the zero-compilation-error stage in 2 days! This is pure productivity!

You can read the entire Xcel Energy case study here

 



How to convert 11,000 lines in a few minutes!

clock February 14, 2011 11:11

Transoft is a large, UK-based system integrator with branches in the US. Last year Transoft became Code Architects' partner for migration services. Last week I asked Transoft's Fiona Oliver why they opted for using VB Migration Partner rather than other migration tools. Here's her answer:

I used VB Migration Partner to convert a small program (11K executable lines) that enables connections to multiple ODBC data sources in separate windows, allows entry and execution of SQL statements, and displays the results. It also allows for metadata export and import to local files. It compiled with no errors and ran with a single pragma to insert a single line of code. In comparison the Visual Studio Upgrade Wizard produced code with over 102 compilation errors. I was very impressed!

This comment makes it evident the huge gap between VB Migration Partner and other "traditional" converters such as Upgrade Wizard and other VB6 converters that are based on the same translation engine.

If you are curious of how VB Migration Partner can help you in your migration efforts, you just need to download our VB6 Bulk Analyzer, run it against your VB6 project, and send us the report.



Guess which VB6 migration tool delivers fewer compilation errors?

clock February 2, 2011 16:48

Migration from VB6 is a serious matter and choosing the wrong approach might cost you a lot of time and money, or even putting at stake the entire migration project.

For this reason we always recommend all our prospect customers to test all the available solutions and tools before making their final choise. This is the experience of Solent, France:

Facing a problem of Microsoft VB6 obsolescence, we spent weeks defining the best way to migrate our customer’s specific enterprise application from VB6 to VB.NET. We tried different COTS migration tools but the results were not the expected ones: too many things to complete manually after the conversion. The idea to develop a proprietary migration tool was in our mind when we finally found VB Migration Partner. It was the solution we needed.

Indeed, with VB Migration Partner, we ended having to manually deal with only about 100 compilation problems compared to more than 10k given by other tools. Its iterative process with replayable corrections (thanks to "pragmas") was a very useful functionality in order to reach a complete validation of the 150K lines of code application we had to migrate. During this process, we found and fixed a large number of execution problems in our application due to migration. A reactive technical support and the clear "knowledge base" on the website helped us to identify problem causes and to correct them. In only 2 months, we delivered a fully-tested and renewed .NET application to our customer.

Damien SEURU
Project Manager, SOLENT

Completing the migration of 150K LOCs in a couple months is surely a great example of the high productivity you can reach with VB Migration Partner. Likewise, having to solve just 100 compilation errors instead of 10,000 gives a very clear idea of how far ahead we are if compared to our competitors!

You can read more about our customers and their experience in our Testimonial page.