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Why Leave VB6/ASP Behind This Year?

Feb 10, 2017

:::note Summary

Given the ever-changing nature of requirements, people, and technologies impacting software development, legacy modernization is an inevitable challenge. Learn about why you should boost the urgency of your modernization efforts in this article.

::: If you still are holding off on your migration project, here are a few reasons why it is more urgent need

First, the official end-of-support for Visual Basic classic (VB6) was in April 2008 — almost 15 years ago. It has also been well over 20 years since the last major release of VB6. As a result, the number of skilled developers who are available and willing to work with VB6 is critically low. This represents a growing business risk for organizations maintaining systems in VB6. The same type of risks exist for organizations maintaining web sites with ASP classic. Keep in mind that no one last for ever, if you depend on key people to help you maintain your legacy apps, they are always getting closer to **retirement;**you would do well to complete your modernization projects while they are available to help.

Second, there have been many recent changes for Windows Operating Systems:

End of Windows XP Extended Support: April 2014
End of Windows Server 2008 Mainstream Support: January 2015
Start of Availability of Windows 10: July 2015
Start of Availability of Windows Server 2016: October 2016
End of Support for Windows 7: January 2020

Third, Microsoft has made huge investments in .NET. Since 2000, Microsoft has published many significant releases of the .NET languages, frameworks, and tools. In addition, Microsoft and others have made great investments in open source. .NET has been well-received by product vendors, developers, and other experts. It enjoys outstanding support from the open source community with compilers, IDEs, frameworks, and other tools enabling .NET development for platforms other than Windows. Going into 2017, we find .NET is a powerful, mature development platform backed by a global community of IT professionals.

Fourth, the last decade brought important advancements in how we build software: improved development operations tools and techniques, powerful new frameworks and design patterns, and exciting new areas for application features. These new tools, new methodologies, work well with .NET. When they are combined with strategic business vision, they make a strong case for modernizing VB6/ASP legacy systems and adopting .NET.

For organizations still running on old, unsupported technologies, this may be the year to plan and implement a successful upgrade! We have the upgrade technology and the necessary expertise in this area to assist you. Please give us a call or email — we will be very happy to hear from you.

gmStudio Version 30.43: Modernization Improvements

Jan 31, 2017

gmBasic: Upgrade Engine

gmBasic is a powerful code processor that reads, interprets, and rewrites VB6/ASP/COM systems as .NET (C# or VB.NET). We are always improving gmBasic so that it is more robust and flexible and it produces cleaner, more correct results. This distribution, Version 30.43, includes several enhancements:

Improves the general ability to produce build-complete .NET code from very large, very complex VB6 systems (most recently including enhancements needed to upgrade a Comprehensive Accounting System of 38 inter-related VBPs re ferencing 1,149 unique files containing over 1.8M unique LOC).
Improves ByRef to ByVal optimization rules
Improves precision of division involving fixed-point quantities.
Improves handling of international Character sets in source code and upgrade configuration files
Improves handling With blocksusing instance of a user-defined type (C#)
Improves handling of IsNull/Null operations with default properties
Improves handling of power-of-ten numeric constants to use the ‘E’ notation (e.g., 1.0E3)
Improves handling of optional parameters that use private symbols as default values by using overloading

gmStudio: Upgrade Solution Development Environment

Powered by gmBasic, gmStudio is a development environment for creating high-performance, custom VB6/ASP/COM to .NET upgrade solutions. We are always adding functionality to gmStudio and also making it easier to use. This distribution includes several enhancements:

Adds a FileName attribute in the ScriptRule commands
Adds support for copying selected text to the clipboard from the Side-by-Side code review form
Adds support for authoring ’%’ character from Search Reporting template (useful for generating refactoring commands from search results)
Improves copying task list data using CTRL-C (names) and Shift-CTRL-C (details)
Adds option to add a User Command Script to each task when adding tasks to a gmStudio project file
Improves Search Reporting options: unique, template, detail, none
Improves ProgID Report by removing deprecated CLSID field
Corrects issue with FileExists test when file path is null
Corrects issue with starting application with the /folder command line switch

Sample Upgrade Rules

gmStudio ships with a collection of sample upgrade rules that can be used to add custom features to your upgrade solution. These XML documents and gmSL scripts are distributed as source that you may modify to fit your unique requirements. The latest distribution of sample rules files includes several improvements:

Standardizes sample COM replacement rulesso that the internal library id is same as default COM library id. This simplifies activating COM replacement rules files in your upgrade solution
Simplifies MigrationSupport namespace conventions to streamline the supporting code if needed
Updates standard script templates by moving configuration folder specifications to top of script
Updates comments in sample standard script templates standard script templates file

Sample Upgrade Solutions

Great Migrations publishes a number of sample VB6/ASP upgrade solutions to illustrate the capabilities of gmStudio. The samples were updated to reflect the latest product improvements and conventions

gmStudio Version 30.40 Release Notes

Dec 8, 2016

gmBasic: Upgrade Engine

gmBasic is a powerful code processor that reads, interprets, and rewrites VB6/ASP/COM systems as .NET (C# or VB.NET). We are always improving gmBasic so that it is more robust and flexible and produces cleaner, more correct results. This distribution, Version 30.40, includes several enhancements:

Improves general ability to produce build-complete .NET code from very large, very complex VB6 systems (most recently including enhancements needed to upgrade a Comprehensive Accounting System of 38 inter-related VBPs referencing 1,149 unique files containing over 1.8M unique LOC).
Improves client-side VBScript to JavaScript transformation when also using Subsystem=loc
Corrects handling of <header> tag in ASP
Improves handling large COM libraries with classes implementing more than 100 interfaces (e.g. ESRI GIS)
Improves rewriting Select Case as C# switch statement rather if/else
Improves restructuring code using both GoSub with GoTo labels into separate functions
Improves recognizing operations in late bound property Get/Let property operations
Improves upgrading Popup menu
Improves handling If Then Else when there is no operation after Then
Increases the use of cleaner, early bound syntax for symbols having an inferred type
Increases the limits of the Build Order Tool to allow up to 1,024 VBPs

gmStudio: Upgrade Development Environment

Powered by gmBasic, gmStudio is a development environment for creating custom VB6/ASP/COM to .NET upgrade solutions. We are always adding functionality to gmStudio and also making it more helpful and easier to use. This distribution includes several enhancements:

Adds support for a Wizard-Only license for a new “Great Migrations Upgrade Wizard” offering.
Improves licensing so that IDF generation is allowed after the Trial License is expired
Improves logic to setup Global Stubs script
Adds Search Terms Presetsto the Search feature
Adds Search Reports Presets tothe Search feature
Improves .NET Build Log Report to more accurately reflect .NET project path
Improves Translation Log Report for missing references

Sample Upgrade Rules

gmStudio ships with a collection of sample upgrade rules that add custom features to your upgrade solution. These XML documents and gmSL scripts are distributed as source that you may modify to fit your unique requirements. This distribution of the latest set of sample rules files includes several improvements:

Improves the default Search Terms file adding presets
Improves the default Search Report Templates file adding presets

Sample Upgrade Solutions

Great Migrations publishes a number of sample VB6/ASP upgrade solutions to illustrate the capabilities of gmStudio. All of the samples were updated to reflect the latest product improvements and conventions.

gmStudio Version 30.37 Release Highlights

Oct 13, 2016

gmBasic: Upgrade Engine

gmBasic is a programming language processor that reads, interprets, and rewrites VB6/ASP/COM as .NET code (C# or VB.NET). We are always improving gmBasic so that it is more flexible and produces cleaner, more correct .NET code. This distribution, Version 30.37, of the upgrade engine and metalanguage files includes several enhancements:

Improves automatically producing build-complete C# code from very large, very complex systems (most recently a Retail Auto Parts Distribution Management System comprised of 80 VBPs and 1.5M LOC).
Corrects missing VB6 Form Menu when the form has no other controls
Improves propagation of Refactor/Rename in in COM description files generated from source code
Increases the number of subclasses that can be members of a coclass in a COM description file
Corrects duplicated interface members in generated stub framework
Improves Naming Conventions for temporary non-LValue arguments needed to pass by ref
Improves correctness of Global Build Process Workflow
Improves upgrading Is Operator to use .Equals() or equality operator as appropriate
Removes built-in support for MigrationSupportUI
Removes built-in support for DevEnv=VS2005 and DevEnv=VS2008

gmStudio: Upgrade Development Environment

Powered by gmBasic, gmStudio is a development environment for building custom VB6/ASP/COM to .NET upgrade solutions. We are always adding functionality to gmStudio and also making it more helpful and easier to use. This distribution contains the latest build of gmStudio, which includes several enhancements:

Improves initial value of Task Description field to contain VBP Name or Description if available
Adds an item for displaying the Side-By-Side viewer from the Source Metrics context menu
Adds Regular Expression Conditions to the ScriptRules processor
Adds PreAnalyse and PostAnalyze insertion points for the ScriptRules processor
Improves Source Reference Report/Search
Improve searching and reporting Multi-Unit Scripts (e.g. ASP site scripts) with SrcType=XML
Improves accuracy of Target Code Scan
Improves CTLR-C and Shift-CTLR-C for copying Task Information to the Clipboard

Sample Upgrade Rules

gmStudio ships with a collection of sample upgrade rules that add custom upgrade features to your upgrade solution — such as custom COM replacement and diagnostic instrumentation. These XML documents and gmSL scripts are distributed as open source and you may modify them to fit your unique requirements. This distribution of the latest set of sample rules files includes several improvements:

Improves the default Custom Scripting Transformation script (ScriptRules.xml)

Sample Upgrade Solutions

Great Migrations publishes a number of VB6/ASP upgrade solution samples to illustrate the capabilities of gmStudio. All of the samples were updated to reflect the latest product improvements and conventions. All samples now target VS2013 although you may easily modify them to target VS2010 or VS2015.

Removes MigrationSupportUI=off

gmBasic Version 30.32: Build-Complete C# Improvements

Aug 30, 2016

gmBasic: Upgrade Engine

gmBasic is a programming language processor that reads, interprets, and rewrites VB6/ASP/COM as .NET code (C# or VB.NET). We are always improving gmBasic so that it is more flexible and produces cleaner, more correct .NET code. This distribution, Version 30.32, of the upgrade engine and metalanguage files includes several enhancements:

Improvements to be able to produce build-complete C# code from very large and very complex systems(most recently a VB6 Shipping/Cargo Simulation System comprised of 22 VBPs and 1M LOC).
Adds Interfaces.dll extension to help upgrade dynamic parameters to Custom Interfaces
Improves Array to Array assignments
Improves upgrading goSub code to separate functions
Improves upgrading Error Handling
Improves support for the COM Stub Framework generation process
Adds gmSL Character functions IsLowerCase, IsUpperCase, and Length

gmStudio: Upgrade Development Environment

gmStudio is a development environment for building custom VB6/ASP/COM to .NET upgrade solutions. We are always adding functionality to gmStudio and also making it more helpful and easier to use. This distribution contains the latest build of gmStudio, which includes several enhancements:

Improves support for running in 32bit environments
Improves stability of running gmStudio as a Visual Studio Extension
Improves support and documentation for the COM Stub Framework generation process
Improves support and documentation for the ScriptRule feature
Adds match order to search results on the Side-by-Side Viewer
Improves Template Search Reporting by making template place-holders case-insensitive
Improves the Visual Studio Solution Report by using a “GenerateSolution.txt” file to file to specify which projects to include in the solution
Improves cancelling long running batch process cancelling the process tree, not just the parent process
Corrects multi-line target code search
Corrects Side-by-Side Viewer when selected search record is from a .NET Designer file
Improves the GUI Scan Report to a record fully-qualified control name for each property setting
Improves the Translation Log Report to record additional warning messages
Contains various minor UI improvements

Sample Upgrade Rules

Adds StubControlBaseClass.xml to assist the upgrade of Stub Framework controls by deriving from WinForms Controls
Improves the COM upgrade for Internet Controls (ieframe.dll/shdocvw.dll/msinet.ocx)
Improves the COM upgrade for MS Calendar Control (MSCAL.OCX)
Improves the COM upgrade for MS Common Controls 2 (MSCOMCT2.OCX)
Improves the COM upgrade for MS FlexGrid Control (MSFLXGRD.OCX)
Improves the COM upgrade for MS WinSock Control (MSWINSCK.OCX)
Improves the COM upgrade for MS XML API (MSXML6.dll)
Improves the COM upgrade for Resize Kit (ResizeKit.ocx)
Improves the COM upgrade for Rich Text Control (richtx32.ocx)
Improves the COM upgrade for UI Rad Text Controls (uiRAD.ocx)
Improves the COM upgrade for RegEx API (vbscript.dll/3)
Improves the Global Stub Framework Generation script (GlobalStubs.xml)
Improves the Custom Scripting Transformation script (ScriptRules.xml)