9.4 dropping VB6 support.. what does this mean for dsmapbook?

[Jeff.Pace]

We have been told (via ESRI in instructor led training) that VB6 is
gone at 9.4 and to transition apps to vb.net

What does this mean for dsmapbook? Any info is appreciated.

[Matt Wilkie]

I've asked ESRI Canada tech support to specify exactly what "VB6 is
gone" means. ESRI has a pretty good track record of supporting
deprecated features and applications, c.f. Arcview3 and Avenue, long
after they stop developing them. I expect it to be more like existing
VB apps will work, but there is no longer any official support for
them. In any case, we'll soon see and I will of course relay their
answer.

-matt

[Jeff Pace]

Great thank you. If you look at the Q&A from this years user
conference it looks like you are right, supported in legacy mode only.

http://events.esri.com/uc/QandA/index.cfm?fuseaction=printall&ConferenceID=2A8E2713-1422-2418-7F20BB7C186B5B83

Q: Will VB6/VBA be supported in the future?


As of March 2008, VB6 is no longer supported by Microsoft. Therefore,
ESRI will not be releasing a VB6 SDK and will not support VB6 at the
ArcGIS 9.4 release. We encourage developers to migrate their projects
and code to the most recent version of Microsoft Visual Studio and the
.NET framework. To help with this transition, we will offer a session
called Migrating VBA/VB6 ArcObjects Applications to .NET at this
year’s User Conference on Wednesday, July 15 from 10:15AM-11:30AM. In
this session, developers will be introduced to design practices,
tools, tips and tricks, and self-help resources to help make this
transition possible.


Since the release of ArcGIS 8, ESRI has supported the VBA programming
language, and it is currently supported with ArcGIS 9.3.1. With the
release of ArcGIS 9.4, ESRI will no longer recommend VBA as a
programming language for extending ArcGIS Desktop applications.
Although we will still support VBA for legacy code and applications,
ESRI encourages developers to use a .NET-based language such as C# or
VB.NET for extending ArcGIS Desktop applications.

[Matt Wilkie]

Tech support responded with a link to this blog post
http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcobjectsdevelopment/archive/2009/03/30/VBA-and-VB6_3A00_-The-Road-Ahead.aspx
which says the same with a bit more detail. Summary:

"For ArcGIS through v9.3.1: VB6 is fully supported.
For ArcGIS 9.4: VB6 will be unsupported. Your code
may just work, but there will be no VB6 SDK, nor
technical support services.

For ArcGIS Desktop through v9.3.1: VBA is included
and fully supported. For ArcGIS Desktop 9.4: VBA
will be available if needed, fully supported but not
recommended."

So as far as mapbook is concerned, we just don't know if it will
continue to function completely. I'll be participating in the 9.4 beta
program so I'll get a chance to find out quite some time before the
final release where it stands.

Even if mapbook does continue to work, as I think likely, it will be
better to pour more effort into porting the necessary functions from
vb6 to .net and python than to keeping the existing code base going.
Of course anyone who feels differently is free to use the Arcmapbook
project itself to put their energy where it's most suited for them. :)

cheers,

--matt