[Free Download Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition.57
Cdztattoo Barreto
How much work was left to do afterwards?How happy are you with the resultant .net project.What was the support like?Is there a support forum anywhere for users of tools like these, neithervendor seems to offer one.
Second, let me clarify our price structure. We sell two different editions of VB Migration Partner: the Professional Edition can convert VB6 apps with max. 50,000 lines of code, whereas the Enterprise Edition has no size limitation and supports a few additional advanced features, such as integration with source code control software and generation of .NET components that are binary-compatible with the original VB6 DLL, which allows you to implement staged migrations of N-tiered COM-based applications.
The price of the Professional Edition for 399 is a special promotion up to June 30th 2009, during a Microsoft UK marketing campaign, for UK only and for applications up to 50K lines of code (LOCs). The price of the Enterprise Edition may vary because it depends on several factors, including number of licenses and number of LOCs to be migrated. This explains why you may see different price quotations. Also, we have recently slightly decreased the list price as our answer to the economic situation. We are also planning to take a few features out of the main product and offer them separately, which would result in a more flexible price structure.
Quite honestly, for applications with 25-50K LOCs we usually recommend a manual rewrite. In fact, our focus is on the enterprise market segment, where you often finds VB6 apps with several hundred thousand LOCs, if not millions. In those cases, a manual rewrite is seldom a viable option: it requires too many skilled VB6/.NET developers, it takes too long, or just costs too much. We have recently published a case study related to an application with 650K LOCs; one of our customers is currently migrating a monster app with about 15 million LOCs!
Both have published special offer prices for the UK market on their basic products on this Microsoft UK page. Of course you need to know the limitations of the basic products and the prices for your market to make a realistic judgement, so you probably do need to contact them :(
The built-in Microsoft upgrade wizard is pathetic - according to the guy who wrote it - of course he is from Artinsoft so he wants to sell you something better. Microsoft UK also say the Artinsoft and Code Architects tools are better than the built-in upgrade wizard.
EDIT: I contacted Code Architects for a quote, they responded very fast. Unlike this Stack Overflow question by Angry Hacker who had a worse experience. But then Francesco Balena popped up on Stack Overflow to answer his question within 12 hours, which is more encouraging.
"updrading" VB6 to .NET is a misnomer. All you get is VB6 code in .NET; generally you can get much better results with a refactor/re-architecture - using a different class model, for example. Perhaps designing to be unit-testable, for example. Or using IoC.
The problem is that the conversion tools don't offer support for the VB6 Graphics commands or the VB6 printer model. Plus you get into a lot of corner cases when dealing with ActiveX controls. I know our own CAD/CAM applications won't translate over with any conversion tools as a lot of tweaks are built into the UI to make it work smoothly with the VB6 Form Engine.
These are things that conversion tools fail on as the WinForm Engine requires it's own tweaks. The same thing was experienced when our software moved from DOS to VB3. Sometimes there is no substitution for manual conversion.
With that being said, there are somethings you can do to make conversion considerably easy. First make sure your application is built in layers. This way you can convert one layer at a time, test and continue on. It also has the advantage of leaving you with usable software at every step. I recommend starting at the top (form) layer and working your way down.
Make sure anything that is VB6 centric and not Basic Centric is behind an interface. When .NET first came out several years ago I created a Canvas Interface and implemented that using the VB6 graphics command. I use the same Canvas interface in VB.NET except now it uses the Graphics Object. The same was done for printers.
Nearly all the code was moved out of our forms into classes that the forms called. The forms themselves implement an interface that the UI Classes used. When we switched to .NET we have a precise definition of how the form interacted with the rest of the system and form conversion was considerably easier.
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms including Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Store and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code.
Visual Studio supports 36 different programming languages [citation needed] and allows the code editor and debugger to support (to varying degrees) nearly any programming language, provided a language-specific service exists. Built-in languages include C,[6] C++, C++/CLI, Visual Basic .NET, C#, F#,[7] JavaScript, TypeScript, XML, XSLT, HTML, and CSS. Support for other languages such as Python,[8] Ruby, Node.js, and M among others is available via plug-ins. Java (and J#) were supported in the past.
The most basic edition of Visual Studio, the Community edition, is available free of charge. The slogan for Visual Studio Community edition is "Free, fully-featured IDE for students, open-source and individual developers". As of February 19, 2024[update], Visual Studio 2022 is a current production-ready version. Visual Studio 2013, 2015 and 2017 are on Extended Support, while 2019 is on Mainstream Support.[9]
Visual Studio does not support any programming language, solution or tool intrinsically; instead, it allows the plugging of functionality coded as a VSPackage. When installed, the functionality is available as a Service. The IDE provides three services: SVsSolution, which provides the ability to enumerate projects and solutions; SVsUIShell, which provides windowing and UI functionality (including tabs, toolbars, and tool windows); and SVsShell, which deals with registration of VSPackages. In addition, the IDE is also responsible for coordinating and enabling communication between services.[10] All editors, designers, project types and other tools are implemented as VSPackages. Visual Studio uses COM to access the VSPackages. The Visual Studio SDK also includes the Managed Package Framework (MPF), which is a set of managed wrappers around the COM-interfaces that allow the Packages to be written in any CLI compliant language.[11] However, MPF does not provide all the functionality exposed by the Visual Studio COM interfaces.[12]The services can then be consumed for creation of other packages, which add functionality to the Visual Studio IDE.
Support for programming languages is added by using a specific VSPackage called a Language Service. A language service defines various interfaces which the VSPackage implementation can implement to add support for various functionalities.[13] Functionalities that can be added this way include syntax coloring, statement completion, brace matching, parameter information tooltips, member lists, and error markers for background compilation.[13] If the interface is implemented, the functionality will be available for the language. Language services are implemented on a per-language basis. The implementations can reuse code from the parser or the compiler for the language.[13] Language services can be implemented either in native code or managed code. For native code, either the native COM interfaces or the Babel Framework (part of Visual Studio SDK) can be used.[14] For managed code, the MPF includes wrappers for writing managed language services.[15]
Visual Studio does not include any source control support built in but it defines two alternative ways for source control systems to integrate with the IDE.[16] A Source Control VSPackage can provide its own customised user interface. In contrast, a source control plugin using the MSSCCI (Microsoft Source Code Control Interface) provides a set of functions that are used to implement various source control functionality, with a standard Visual Studio user interface.[17][18] MSSCCI was first used to integrate Visual SourceSafe with Visual Studio 6.0 but was later opened up via the Visual Studio SDK. Visual Studio .NET 2002 used MSSCCI 1.1, and Visual Studio .NET 2003 used MSSCCI 1.2. Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010 use MSSCCI Version 1.3, which adds support for rename and delete propagation, as well as asynchronous opening.[18]
Visual Studio supports running multiple instances of the environment (each with its own set of VSPackages). The instances use different registry hives (see MSDN's definition of the term "registry hive" in the sense used here) to store their configuration state and are differentiated by their AppId (Application ID). The instances are launched by an AppId-specific .exe that selects the AppId, sets the root hive, and launches the IDE. VSPackages registered for one AppId are integrated with other VSPackages for that AppId. The various product editions of Visual Studio are created using the different AppIds. The Visual Studio Express edition products are installed with their own AppIds, but the Standard, Professional, and Team Suite products share the same AppId. Consequently, one can install the Express editions side-by-side with other editions, unlike the other editions which update the same installation. The professional edition includes a superset of the VSPackages in the standard edition, and the team suite includes a superset of the VSPackages in both other editions. The AppId system is leveraged by the Visual Studio Shell in Visual Studio 2008.[19]
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