After many months of internal beta testing, last week we released our revolutionary ADOLibrary to selected customers.

As you may remember from a previous post, Code Architects' ADOLibrary offers effortless migration from ADODB to ADO.NET. Basically, ADOLibrary is a set of ADO.NET-based classes that expose an ADODB-like object model. For example, the ADOConnection object has the same programming interface as ADODB.Connection and behaves much like the same; the ADORecordset class works like the ADODB.Recordset class, and so on. ADOLibrary currently supports all ADODB classes, with the only exception of the Record class. It is important to emphasize that ADOLibrary is fully ADO.NET and has no dependency on ADODB or other COM technologies.

ADOLibrary currently supports the vast majority of ADODB features, including forwardonly-readonly rowsets, optimistic batch updates, parameterized commands and stored procedures, the Filter property for client-side recordsets. If accessing Microosft SQL Server, keysets and dynamic server-side cursors are also supported. ADOLibrary event supports most ADODB dynamic properties, such as Update Criteria and Unique Table.

Actually, it's easier to list what ADOLibrary does *not*currently support, namely hierarchical recordset, the Record object, and multiple, semicolon-separated commands in the Execute method (they are fine in the Recordset.Open method, though).

The whole ADOLibrary documentation is already available online. This is a draft version and lacks some code samples, but it is already enough exhaustive to be usable.

We just received a very nice comment from our customer, and I couldn't help quoting it:

I must say at this point I am incredibly impressed with the software, tried other products and got a half baked application that ran in loops.  With VB Migration Partner I had a running prototype the same day.  This is the best spent money we have ever experienced.  Thanks and good luck with the product.

Jeremy Pethick
Mazeppa AS 

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.

Danske Bank is the largest financial enterprise in Denmark and one of the largest in the Nordic region. The Group Teller System was implemented in the Bank’s branches in 2001, and since then various new functionality has been developed for the system. Microsoft no longer supports the VB6 IDE, so the bank decided to convert it to the .NET platform.

Branch Systems in Retail Solutions were given the assignment to convert the Group Teller System from the VB6 platform to the .NET platform. The application consists of 350,000 lines of code, a fact that ruled out the option of manual conversion. The company therefore chose VB Migration Partner to support the conversion, since this tool is developed particularly to support conversions from VB6 to .NET. This decision has meant a fast conversion and also brought to a noticeably improved conversion quality.

”In terms of effort, using VB Migration Partner is significantly more efficient than manual conversion or rewriting from scratch, especially considering that banking applications require very rigorous testing plans. As a matter of fact, much of the effort was spent on quality assurance, as the project has been focused on securing a high quality of the finished product”, says Michael Munk Lerskov, Project Manager. "After the conversion the Group Teller System was successfully deployed on more the 2.000 clients. Training of the users was not needed because the user interface was similar to the interface of the VB6 version. This is an additional advantages of using VB Migration Partner, that the converted GUI is almost identical to the original one."

You can read the entire case study here.

Every day we receive requests and queries from VB6 developers and companies who are interested in migrating their code to .NET. Migration a complex application to .NET is a serious matter, therefore it’s no surprise that virtually all our prospects plan to compare our software with the similar tools from the competition.

We take migration seriously and we take competition even more seriously. As a matter of fact, we entered this market niche only when we were sure we could offer the best VB6 software that could be possibly written. And that’s why we have continued to improve our VB Migration Partner until it offered support for virtually all major VB6 features, including outdated features such as “classic” drag-and-drop and DDE.

Some other companies in this market have a different perspective, though, and some of our competitors prefert to cut the list price instead of improving their software to match all the VB Migration Partner’s features. A recent example: One of our competitors has dropped their list prices twice in a few months, in an obvious attempt to compensate for all the features that their product lacks.

Which brings up an interesting question: is the list price the “correct” way to estimate how expensive migration tools are? Isn't the total cost of migration a better criterion for selecting the right conversion tool?

All the real-world migration experiences and case studies show that greater part of migration costs is related to the manpower needed for manual tasks that are to be completed before and after the mere action of passing the VB6 code through the conversion software. In the big scenario, the cost of the migration tool is a very small fraction of the total cost, often in the range 5-10% or even lower. Therefore, when comparing migration tools the most “correct” selection criterion should account for the manual labor that each tool saves you

Some time ago we published a very detailed white paper that compares VB Migration Partner with other VB6 conversion tools. The document clearly illustrates that VB Migration Partner outperforms the competition under virtually all aspects, yet it doesn’t really emphasizes which supported features impact on the total cost and duration of the migration process. Here we remedy with the following short summary.

1. Functional equivalence: VB Migration Partner can handle even the most subtle differences between VB6 and VB.NET, including true auto-instancing (As New) semantics, by-reference ParamArray, correct disposal of database connection and other COM objects, thread-safe behavior for multithreaded components, 100%-compatible file I/O statements, and the many methods that behave slightly differently in VB6 and VB.NET. These features can dramatically cut the time required for testing the migrated application.

"It took 2.5 hours to get a compilable and runnable VB.NET project with VB Migration Partner, and 13 hours with its closest competitor." (from a case study by SIS, an Austrian Microsoft Partner)

2. Variant and Null values: VB Migration Partner can (optionally) translate Variants into the special VB6Variant type, which behaves exactly like the VB6 type. It even supports Empty and Null values, which is a lifesaver if you are migrating a database-intensive application that uses Null values in expressions and assignments. By comparison, all other conversion tools simply convert Variant into the Object type, which in practice means that you have carefully test each and every statement that might be using a Null or Empty value.

Note: one of our customers is converting a very large VB6 application that makes extensive use of Variants; they estimated that VB Migration Partner saved no fewer than 3-4 man/moths just because of its support for Variants and Null values. We will provide more details when the migration is completed.

3. Late-binding method calls: VB Migration Partner comes with a library of .NET controls that expose the same properties and methods as the original VB6 controls. This detail ensures that your code works fine after the conversion to .NET, even if the control is accessed in late-bound mode. If you use another conversion tool you must manually rewrite each and every statement that uses late binding. If your VB6 code uses many Variant, Object, and Control variables, this task alone can keep you busy for weeks.

4. Support for *all* VB6 keywords and features: if your VB6 app uses GoSub, On Goto, or On Gosub statements, using a conversion tool other than VB Migration Partner means spending at least a few minutes on each of these keywords. The problem might be more serious if your VB6 code relies on other, less common features - such as Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), ADO data sources or data consumers - because you’d be forced to re-write large portions of your code. Implementing a reliable communication infrastructure based on .NET remoting or WCF may take one week or two if you aren’t a .NET guru, or it takes ten seconds flat if you use VB Migration Partner.

5. Graphic statements: VB Migration Partner supports virtually all VB6 graphic capabilities, including the Line and Circle methods, double-buffering (the AutoRedraw property), and user-defined system coordinates (ScaleMode property). VB Migration Partner lets you can convert a graphic-intensive VB6 application in a matter of seconds. Any other conversion tool takes days even for the simplest graphic project, because none of them supports these graphic features.

For examples of painless conversion of graphic-intensive VB6 code, have a look at EGL25, TypeNSign, Stars, Barcode Generator, BC-52, and MP3 Player applications in our Code Sample section. (We even have fully playable versions of classic games such as Tetris, Pacman, and Space Invaders!)

6. Windows API calls: all our competitors are behind VB Migration Partner in how they deal with complex Windows API calls, such As Any and callback (AddressOf) parameters in Declares statements. Our VB Migration Partner goes even further: it automatically fixes undocumented issues caused by string immutability and orphaned delegates, recommends the best “pure .NET” replacement for 300+ common Windows API calls, and automatically performs the substitution automatically, if possible. You can read more here.

7. Rich user interface: in theory all conversion tools support all VB6 user interface features; in practice tools from our competitors require that you manually fix each individual form. An indirect evidence of their limits is that none of our competitors dares to offer examples of real-world VB6 forms and the corresponding .NET form, because they would be obliged to mention all the manual fixes that are necessary to have a working .NET application. Also, none of our competitors even gets near VB Migration Partner’s support for more advanced UI features, such as drag-and-drop (both OLE and “classic” flavors), popup menus, dynamically created controls (the Controls.Add method), and 100%-compatible object models for complex controls such as TreeView, ListView, Toolbar, and StatusBar.

Tip: When comparing conversion tools, have a look at the many differences between VB6 and .NET controls, prepare a list of those that may be important for you, and ask each vendor whether their tool can handle them.

8. Staged migrations: VB Migration Partner is the only conversion software that can convert a large N-tiered VB6 application one DLL at a time while preserving the binary compatibility with the original VB6 components. Binary compatibility means that you can reuse the VB6 user interface to launch and test the converted .NET components, and you can even reuse your automatic test procedures, if you have any. You can even hit the market with a “hybrid” VB6 / .NET solution earlier, if you need to do so. If ease of testing and reduced time-to-market are important to you, the choice is obvious.

9. The convert-test-fix methodology: A real-world migration process may take weeks or months, and you might need to extend or modify the original VB6 code before the migration is complete. All other tools on the market work on a snapshot of the VB6 code, therefore once the migration is ended you’ll have to manually modify the .NET code to preserve the functional equivalence with the VB6 application. This process takes time and is error prone, and can be very expensive. You don’t incur in this added cost if you adopt our convert-test-fix methodology, which in turn is based on migration pragmas (another VB Migration Partner’s unique feature).

"The batch processing and code-test-fix methodology will allow us to convert a changing code base without making the same changes twice, once in VB6 and again in VB.Net." , said Brian Olson, Actuarial Systems Corporation, USA.

10. Documentation, code samples, licensing, and support: A realistic estimation of total migration costs must include the time needed to become familiar with the migration software and its idiosyncrasies, peculiarities, and defects. In this respect, nothing beats VB Migration Partner’s online manual and the vast knowledge base, which we update and improve almost every day with tips, code examples, and workarounds.

We believe so much in our software that we offer lifetime warranty on VB Migration Partner’s support library: if you are a registered user of version 1.xx you have the right to download future 1.xx versions of the library. (For more details, please read our EULA.) Compare our approach with the time-limited license that most of our competitors offer, and you’ll have a clearer idea of which product can really save your time and which one can waste your money.

As for the quality of tech support, here is what some of our customers have to say:

"The documentation is excellent, and Code Architects’ tech support has always been very responsive."
Dr. Otto J. Wiegele, CEO, SIS Datenverarbeitung GmbH

"I’d like to thank Code Architects’ technical support team, who supported us through our endeavors, in a professional and efficient way. They and their software allowed us to complete the migration of our flagship application earlier than expected."
Marco Meneo, ProgeSoftware, Italy

"The Code Architects Team always solved all our doubts and problems, often in a matter of hours. Francesco Balena in person replied to the toughest queries about COM marshaling and object disposal. It was a pleasant surprise to find such a competent team and a company that is willing to extend their support to issues that aren’t strictly related to their product."
Stefano Baldi, Engineering PLM Solutions, Italy

"Any issue that I raised was answered positively on a next day if not next hour basis also made a huge difference. It's really as close to having VB Migration Partner's support team work in my office as one could get!"
Ara Ashikian, P.Eng., President, Structural Concepts Ltd, Vancouver, BC - Canada

We've just published a case study of a migration carried out by SIS, an Austrian Microsoft partner who used VB Migration Partner to convert a middle-sized ERP system (about 650,000 lines of code), with a good assortment of challenges. The part that I like most is the following paragraph (the boldface is mine):

During the software evaluation phase we run a 25K prototype through all the conversion programs. It took 2.5 hours to get a compilable and runnable VB.NET project with VB Migration Partner, and 13 hours with its closest competitor. The reduced effort, the ability to use pragmas and support for the convert-test-fix were the main reasons for choosing Code Architects’ software. Later we discovered that their tech support is also excellent.

It looks like VB Migration Partner allows you to convert VB6 apps to VB.NET about 5 times faster than its competitors. Interestingly, the ratio is virtually the same also for larger, real-worlds apps - as you can ascertain by reading our competitors' case studies related to applications of comparable size.

You can read the entire story here.

We just received this comment from a customer:

An initial migration compared migration tools from six vendors. It showed superior results for VB Migration Partner from Code Architects, which delivered fewer compilation and runtime errors than all its competitors. Its migration pragmas and the convert-test-fix methodology proved to be powerful and flexible enough to handle a large VB6 application (950K lines of code) with ease, the documentation is excellent, and Code Architects’ tech support has always been very responsive.

Dr. Otto J. Wiegele, CEO, SIS Datenverarbeitung GmbH

The boldface is mine, as I wanted to emphasize that our customer selected our VB Migration Partner after comparing as many as SIX competing products. They told us that they selected our software because it was twice as productive than the second item in the list.

'nuff said!

More and more VB Migration Partner are finishing the migration of large business apps and are willing to share their experience with readers of this blog.

In 1995 we realized a client/server application in VB3 using several third party controls, such as Crystal Report, Formula 1, and Crescent QuickPak. Over the years the software was greatly enhanced with new features and was ported to VB5 and then to VB6.

Two years ago our customer asked us to port the application to .NET, which in the meantime had reached the remarkable size of 800,000 lines of code. A manual rewriting was clearly too complex and expensive.

Almost accidentally we learned about VB Migration Partner, which was in non-public alpha release at the time, and it already looked quite promising for our purposes. We decided to invest some time in modernizing the VB6 code while waiting for the official release, which we adopted shortly after its official debut.

In these months we found the tool quite powerful and versatile, and surprisingly complete for a 1.0 release. More specifically, the included AxWrapperGen tool allowed us to create wrapper classes that guarantee the correct working of a few VB6 controls that aren’t directly supported under VB.NET. We estimate that this tool alone spared us several man months of hard work.

Finally, I’d like to thank Code Architects’ technical support team, who supported us through our endeavors, in a professional and efficient way. They and their software allowed us to complete the migration of our flagship application earlier than expected.

Marco Meneo
ProgeSoftware, Italy

800,000 lines of code is a *big* application to convert. Nevertheless, ProgeSoftware successfully completed the migration without any support from Code Architects other than the standard email support we offer to all our customers.

Unlike other conversion tools on the market, VB Migration Partner is so powerful and well documented that it requires no hiring external, expensive experts who show you how to prepare the VB6 code before the migration and how to manually fix all the issues that the tool left unresolved.

Read more user comments.

When we began our work on VB Migration Partner, we were aware that we had to make our product much better than the Upgrade Wizard and other conversion tools on the market, and that we had to backup our product with first-class, knowledgeable, and swift tech support. We are delighted that our customers realize that our approach makes a big difference.

Here is the abridged version of a blog post by Jugo Arsovski, a VB.NET consultant who used the Upgrade Wizard and then our VB Migration Partner to migrate an VB6 application by one of his customers. (Boldface is mine.)

I started Visual Basic 2005 Upgrade Wizard and after few steps I had converted .NET application. Oh my god! It was the worst converted code I’ve ever seen in my life. I ended up with zillion errors and warnings. It was practically useless code. I really had no idea where to start from. Almost every line in the project was underlined with red or green. I spent about 5 hours just trying to clean it up so I could understand some errors better. With that 5 hours I spent I only got about 1/1000 way through it so that should say how bad it was.[...]

I installed the VB Migration Partner on my computer and then ran the application. You wouldn’t believe that I was used to the GUI after only two or three minutes. It was love on first sight. lol

I have not spent a single minute on reading the help files. It is so simple to use that it is an absolute delight to work with. Actually all I had to do was to open VB6 project and then to click the "Convert to .NET" toolbar button (F5). Yes it was that simple. Only two steps and I had the VB6 application converted.

I ended up with only 65 errors and 17 warnings. I believe it's worth mentioning that this is nontrivial project, involving thousands of executable lines, a lot of methods, classes, DLL's etc. I am telling you this so you clearly understand that the initial 65 errors are relatively few, and seeing that was a real revelation to me. If i judge by the time it took to convert this application then this tool is certainly for all kind of migrations, beginning with the small and progressing to the huge ones (even those with millions executable lines). [...]

All the errors were related to certain interface but, honestly, i didn't know how to handle it. That’s why I contacted the VB Migration Support. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by their efficiency and quick response. Actually this is very interesting part. To my great satisfaction I was privileged to communicate with Mr. Francesco Balena. [...]  

Isn't it brilliant that the author also leads the tech support team? No doubt this gentleman knows very well, that support is so essential in overcoming the initial dismay for automatic conversion tools. He contacted me the next day after I sent him an email and answered a ton of questions including the most important one, how to fix the remaining 65 errors.

As you can guess I was able to fix all the errors in the next ten minutes after Francesco's answer and finally compile the VB.NET project. Yep! It worked like a charm. 

I clearly remember when Jago contacted our tech support. He asked several tough questions, so I decided to reply personally. He was having a problem with a 3rd-party GIS type library which exists in both COM and .NET versions. One of the interfaces in the COM version had to be mapped to the corresponding base class in the .NET version. He solved his problem by simply adding a PostProcess pragma to the original VB6 code.

Producing only 65 compile errors in a large project is a great accomplishment by itself, but the ability to eliminate most of these compilation errors with just one pragma tells even more about VB Migration Partner power.

In case you didn't notice, however, the most interesting part of this story is the very last sentence:  It worked like a charm.

It confirms that converted VB.NET apps often works fine at the first run once you eliminate the (relatively few) compilation errors. This is only one of the 17 advantages of VB Migration Partner's support library. 

A good migration tool would be nothing without an adequate tech support. That's why we invest all our energies to answer our customers' request as quickly as possible. At times this is difficult because we have so many customers overseas. At times we work on Saturdays so that everything works fine on Monday morning. I personally write the majority of KB articles, to share our knowledge among users and make our tool easier to use. 

It's a lot of effort, but it's so rewarding when a customer gives us such a great feedback:

Structural Concepts Ltd. has been developing Virtual Bridges for over 10 years. The unique next generation bridge engineering software is being used on a number of notable projects and design competitions.

In order to take advantage of the increased available memory in MS Vista 64 as well as to take advantage of multi-core processors, the large VB6 software base is being migrated to MS Visual Studio.Net. It was important to proceed in an efficient manner while still being able to continue using and expanding the existing version of Virtual Bridges. While the architecture of the software was very well thought out, any thought of carrying out the migration process manually or with partial conversion tools would have been out of the question. Although proceeding step by step using COM interopt was initially contemplated, it quickly became apparent that the process and debugging worflow would be too inefficient.

By some luck, I came accross VB Migration Partner's web site. Based on prior first hand knowledge of Francesco Balena's excellent VB text books, I was sold even before the product was released. Once it was released, I immediately purchased it and put it to good use.

This is the part I like most. (The boldface is mine.)

It is absolutely clear that VBMP is an essential tool for the migration of any real project. Frankly, given the exemplary support from the lead developer and author of in my opinion the finest VB textbooks out there, I could only proceed with full confidence. Given that any issue that I raised was answered positively on a next day if not next hour basis also made a huge difference. It's really as close to having VB Migration Partner's support team work in my office as one could get!

Ara Ashikian, P.Eng.
President, Structural Concepts Ltd
Vancouver, BC
Canada

It's worth noticing that Structural Concepts is migrating a VB6 app to VB.NET while extending and updating the VB6 code at the same time. This is the kind of wonder that only VB Migration Partner's convert-test-fix methodology can offer. No other VB6 conversion tool even comes close.