What are the code changes and other activities required before migration?

Subject

Pre Migration Requirements

Applies to

Visual Basic Upgrade Companion Enterprise Edition, Visual Basic Upgrade Companion Developer Edition

Inquiry Description

Using the Upgrade Wizard included in Visual Studio required to prepare the code prior to performing the automated migration. Do the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion has this kind of requirements as well?

Troubleshooting/solution

Different enhancements and features in the latest versions of VBUC, especially version 7.2, has made the “Code preparation task” or “Premigration task” less time-consuming in a migration project. VBUC now implements during the automatic migration phase most of the recommendations of tools like the Code Advisor from Microsoft.

On the other hand, there are other activities that are always recommended prior to project start:

1. Prepare the migration environment. Prepare a physical or virtual machine with the VB6 development environment of the application. The idea is to make sure that all components are installed to fully compile the application.
2. Make sure that there are no missing files in the source application. This will allow the VBUC to find all references and generate the correct types and references in the .NET solution.
3. Code Cleanup. Some of the functionality of the application may no longer be used. Removing unused code will help you concentrate development efforts on the actual code that needs to be migrated. ArtinSoft recommends a thorough review of the application’s source code to remove all unused or unnecessary code before starting the migration.
4. Determine Source Code Baseline. Some customers may have customized versions of the Visual Basic 6.0 application to satisfy specific needs of different users. It is important to define a baseline of the application that will be migrated to .NET.