Tips for working with the VB Upgrade Wizard

Tips for working with the VB Upgrade Wizard

To ease the pain of converting line after line after line of Visual Basic 6 code to VB 2005, Microsoft provides developers with the Visual Basic Upgrade. The tools works very well Bill Sempf reported in a March 2006 MSDN article, Deconstructing the Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    When you register, you'll begin receiving targeted emails from my team of award-winning writers. Our goal is to provide a unique online resource for developers, architects and development managers tasked with building and maintaining enterprise applications using Visual Basic, C# and the Microsoft .NET platform.

    Hannah Smalltree, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchWinDevelopment.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchWinDevelopment.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

-- Sempf reports a 96% line-by-line success rate for the programs he tested.

The wizard, though, is not perfect, and Sempf uses the tip to point out what sort of things won't be able to make the move.

For starters, the Upgrade Wizard does not support ASP to ASP.NET migrations. There's a perfectly good reason why, Sempf said -- the wizard covers VB, and ASP apps are written in VBScript.

In addition, three types of functionality -- data, printing and graphics -- are not updated directly from VB 6, Sempf noted. In the first case, ADO objects are wrapped into something called a Runtime Callable Wrapper. In the second case, the concept of a default printer is moot. In the third case, graphical functionality is moved to a different namespace.

Other possible pitfalls involve Solutions/Projects Groups, whose references should be set up before running the Upgrade Wizard and a couple controls that Sempf said did not upgrade properly.

Read Deconstructing the Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard

More on VB 6 to VB.NET Migration from SearchVB.com

  • Reference: Special Report: VB 6-to-VB.NET Migration
  • Tip: Getting started: Tips for VB6 to VB.NET 2.0 migration
  • RSS: Subscribe to our VB and .NET News Channel

    This was first published in May 2006

    • Disclaimer: Our Tips Exchange is a forum for you to share technical advice and expertise with your peers and to learn from other enterprise IT professionals. TechTarget provides the infrastructure to facilitate this sharing of information. However, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or validity of the material submitted. You agree that your use of the Ask The Expert services and your reliance on any questions, answers, information or other materials received through this Web site is at your own risk.

    Back to top