Autologue -- PartsWatch Auto Parts Inventory and Distribution System (VB6)

Overview

Autologue is a leading provider of automotive aftermarket software solutions. Autologue’s PartsWatch product offers advanced auto parts inventory and distribution management features.

Project Highlights

Phase 1: Standard Upgrade and Training

Main objective: to accelerate the incremental migration of PartsWatch to the C#.NET platform reducing cost and risk without requiring a code freeze or sacrificing quality.
77 inter-related vb6 projects
1.6M source code lines
34 external COM components and controls
Effort: 30 person-days for solution development, 5 days for customer training

Great Migrations provided development, training, and support for using gmSudio to implement an automated, repeatable upgrade solution. This solution generates an integrated, build-complete set of C# application projects from the PartsWatch VB6 code. It also generates set of C# projects providing a stub class framework to replace the COM dependencies found in that code. All of the projects are organized in a VS2015 solution to facilitate a full-stack build and further analysis and development. Great Migrations also provided an on-sight gmStudio training workshop to hand-off the upgrade solution and ensure that the the Autologue team would be able to advance and use the solution as part a broader, long-term upgrade strategy.

Phase 2: Custom Upgrade Support

The PartsWatch team put the project on hold for several years and operated in a hybrid mode designing and developing a framework that allowed running .NET UI elements under their VB6 host. In 2022, Autologue re-engaged Great Migrations to help them migrate to a pure .NET architecture and we assisted with Custom Upgrade Solution design and development to implement numerous custom upgrade features:

COM Replacements

Mshflxgd.ocx	Replace MSHierarchicalFlexGridLib with In-House Grid Control
msado15.dll	Replace ADODB with In-House Data Access API
mscomm32.ocx	Replace new In-House Serial Communication API
ieframe.dll	Replace WebBrowser with In-House WebBrowser Control
richtx32.ocx	Replace RichTextLib with Winforms.RichtextBox
comdlg32.ocx	Repalce MSComDlg with Winforms CommonDialog components
SYSINFO.OCX	Replace SysInfo with .NET API calls
Msflxgrd.ocx	Replace MSFlexGrid with In-House Grid Control
mscomctl.ocx	Replace MSComCtlLib controls with WinForms controls and extensions
mscomct2.ocx	Replace MSComCtl2 controls with WinForms controls and extensions
tapi3.dll	Replace tapi3.dll (Telephony) with Interop assembly
msxml3.dll	Replace MSXML2 with System.Xml
Scrrun.dll	Replace Scripting File/IO with System.IO
In-House Control Framework	Replace an extensive custom control library to its .NET replacement
In-House Technical Framework	Replace an extensive collection of in-house technical APIs to .NET replacements

Structural

Consolidate over 90 Shared files changing shared code file references to common assembly references
Remove dozens of unused files and methods
Integrate hand-coded methods and files

Architecture

Migrate rich VB6-based composite application framework to .NET-based composite application framework
Migrate extensive collection of user-defined controls to .NET
Migrate hundreds of UserControls to custom Forms
Migrate Multi-Language support to new design

Language

Optimized Type Inference
Migrate 1000s of VB.Collections and Scripting.Dictionaries to strongly typed Generic Lists and Dictionaries
Migrate using Optional Arguments
Migrating Twips to Pixels as needed

Win32

Rework over 100 methods to use .NET framework services rather than Win32 API calls

Value Added

Integrate nuget packages
Batch upgrade pipeline including all translations, solution generation, and .NET builds
Implement custom upgrade engine using gmAPI