Skip to content

Blog

gmStudio Roadmap

:::note Summary

The gmStudio product roadmap is driven by an overriding principle: gmStudio users should enjoy outstanding software re-engineering results, with less effort. We believe that principle is served by three broad qualities: ease of use, flexibility, and accuracy of results. Our roadmap milestones and objectives all support one of more of these broad qualities. Learn more about our plans for gmStudio Product improvements in this article.

::: I was in a sales demo last week and an architect from the client team asked about the gmStudio roadmap so I felt it was a good topic for a blog entry. A sampling of roadmap objectives are presented below. These are only teaser descriptions: the problems and solutions are in the details and no details are covered here. Each of these these deserves its own blog post and much more… stay tuned.

Enhance the tool to assist with functional quality verification. Everyone of our customers can use help with testing and there are many things we can do to help: test case generation, test data identification, automating comparison of old and new systems.

Support new target and source languages as well as application architecture changes, the sky’s the limit.

  • Support for .NET Core conventions, frameworks, and tools
  • .NET to .NET - global refactoring
  • Desktop to Mobile, Desktop to Web, Desktop to RIA
  • Desktop to WPF
  • Oracle Form Migration
  • VBA Migration (Access to .NET)
  • Embedded SQL to stored procs
  • Desktop to Web
  • ASPclassic to MVC
  • Java to .NET
  • VB6 to Java
  • Application Security auditing and risk mitigation
  • Additional COM replacements rules and extensions

More Prescriptive target application architectures and frameworks

Section titled “More Prescriptive target application architectures and frameworks”

In general, we assume that customers want to follow their own standard for architecture and code so we focus on flexibility, but frequently customers want us to prescribe major aspects of the target design for them. Being able to move a legacy application into a comprehensive predefined application architecture would be a compelling offering to many customers. We intend to look for such frameworks (such as Enterprise Library and various open source frameworks) and help customers adopt them as part of the migration.

We could do a lot to improve user experience and productivity. Some ideas for improving the gmStudio UX are:

  • Easier implementation of advanced transformations
  • improved Visual Studio integrations
  • Custom configuration files editors
  • integrating analysis and configuration tasks.

Some of our international customers have international characters in their application symbols (i.e. variable names, function names): they want these removed. This would be a small matter using gmStudio.

Some of our customers want to rework their codes to work for international markets. There are certain conventions and best practices for writing systems in .NET that facilitate localization and we can generate codes that conform to these conventions and best practices.

Enhance the tool to integrate code analysis features with test planning and estimation concepts so that extremely large software re-engineering efforts can be completed most efficiently.

And last but definitely not least: one of most important items on our roadmap is incorporating improvements that come up in working with customers. These items typically get moved right to the front of the line in terms of our release planning. If you have features you would like to see added to gmStudio, please contact us and reference this blog.


The END of Windows XP

The end is near!!!! Windows XP paid and free support will end next year. It is important to note that all unsupported software has an expiration date. Not only support, but the ability to use that software will end one day. Microsoft is moving farther and farther away from desktop applications. What support will end next? It is important to be ready and know your options.

Microsoft XP End Date

04/26/2013 public release

gmBasic
[+] Upgrade to 10.05B1
[+] gmSL enhanced to support the types of transforms used in RDO sample

MetaLang
[Change] lang\GMSLANG.XML
[Change] lang\OPCODES.XML
[Change] lang\SharedFile.xml
[Change] lang\VBASIC.XML

gmStudio
[+] Add logic to automatically repair gmProj files when project/source folders are moved by the user
[+] Add support for /MakeMetalang switch in the TScript field to rebuild metalang file before running translation
[+] Change Build Order command string to ignore project-specific startup file

[!] Correct active task tracking bug on the main form

gmSamples
[+] Demonstrate SharedFiles consolidation feature in FMStocks DLLs C# sample (See DemoFMSLib_csh.gmproj)

04/21/2013 public release

gmBasic
[+] Upgrade to 10.04
[+] Implement major upgrade to gmSL scripting engine
[+] Improved support for stubbing and migrating VB6 intrinsic controls
[+] Introduce autoloaded configuration file Language.<sysid>.xml to allow modified handling of intrinsic VB classes/controls
[+] Add analyzer routine and metalang changes to include the Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility only if needed.
[+] Improve translation of Control.Index with control arrays
[!] Allow explicit use of “VB.” namespace (i.e. VB6.OLB) in VB6 codes

MetaLang
[Change] lang\enumerations.xml
[Change] lang\GMSLANG.XML
[Change] lang\OPCODES.XML
[Change] lang\TOOLLANG.XML
[Change] lang\TYPES.XML
[Change] lang\vbcontrols.XML
[Change] lang\vbasic.XML
[Change] lang\VB7LANG.XML
[Change] idf\asplang.xml

[Replace] lang\AspAuthor.xml with AspAuthor.gmsl
[Replace] lang\AUDITVBI.XML with AuditVBI.gmsl
[Replace] lang\IdlAuthor.xml with IdlAuthor.gmsl
[Replace] lang\SharedFile.xml with SharedFile.gmsl
[Replace] lang\textcode.xml with AuthorText.gmsl
[Replace] lang\Utility.xml with Utility.gmsl

[Add] idf\asplang.gmsl
[Add] idf\Language.std.xml — allows for custom VB controls migrations

gmStudio
[+] update structure report to handle missing source files in a more intuitive manner. PRM-247
[+] correct issue with IDF Generation when using a project-specific startup
[+] include User and Language file searches to include *.gmsl files.
[+] Added support for /startDefault switch in the TScript field to suppress custom gmBasic.xml (DemoScanTool)
[+] Improved error handling for unregistered TLBs during IDF generation
[!] Correct DiffToFileCmd in gmStudio.cfg

gmSamples
[+] Update DemoScantool\usr\GlobalSettings.xml to new gmSL standard
[+] Update DemoScantool\usr\GM.mscomctl.ocx.xml to new gmSL standard
[+] Update to use new runtime support for DirListBox and DriveListBox — no more VisualBasic.Compatibility
[+] Update FileExplorer samples to demonstrate RichTextbox upgrade
[+] Update to show how to upgrade VB6 intrinsic objects
[+] Include migration dlls in the usr folders as needed

Installer
[+] Remove migration DLLs from gmStudio installer

gmStudioPlugin (beta)
[+] new preview image for VS extension manager dialog

04/03/2013 public release

gmStudio
[+] Read install folder from registry rather than assuming default. (corrects PRM-244 Drive Letter confusion looking for license file)
[+] Add Help button to tool bar
[+] Add Tools button to tool bar
[!] Correct Analytics Symbols Report template

Installer
[+] Record install folder in registry

gmStudioPlugIn (beta)
[+] Hide main menu bar when running as VS plugin

Download: