Is VB Migration Scary?

By Imran Salahuddin | Published on March 31st, 2015 | Last updated on June 26th, 2019 |

How to do a successful VB6 Migration

Have you made the VB migration or do you still have tons of VB6 code running in your organization? I’m always surprised in our consulting and debugging work how much VB6 code is running. I’m a strong advocate of not breaking working code, but since Microsoft ended all support for VB6, one should have already started planning what you’re going to do with that code.

I do believe that there are a few things that do make people nervous about VB migration. If I had to pick a few basic options to look out for when dealing with a legacy VB6 application, they would be:

• Don’t touch it – if the application is rarely updated, leave it as is.
• Change it – if you find a comparable or open source service use it.
• Migrate to .NET – migration tools work wonders.
• Expand in .NET – add new functionalities and controls.
• Redraft – write the whole code in .NET.

A lot of people around the industry have felt that VB migration is too large of a task. I believe that VB6 had restrictions that VB.NET since gotten rid of. It has been in my experience that the time spent learning VB.NET is so overwhelming that the change has been hard to validate.

I my first experience with VB.NET began when Visual Studio.NET was in the alpha release process. Although the syntax of VB6 is significantly different from VB.NET, I believe that the quantity of time I spent trying to understand VB.NET was rapidly made up for in productivity when creating ASP.NET pages as opposed to ASP 4.0.

VB6 occurred for one purpose and one purpose only – to fleece the complications of COM.

VB6 was the Godfather, while VB.NET is as commanding as C#. Businesses with huge investments in VB6 don’t have to worry because they can still use of their legacy resources by transferring them to .NET.

Want to learn more about the importance of a VB migration? Click here for details!

Imran Salahuddin

VP of Technology & Migration Services at Macrosoft Inc

Imran serves as Macrosoft’s VP of Technology & Migration Services. With two decades of industry experience, Imran continues to demonstrate his ability to ensure seamless migrations. Imran works with Project Managers, sales/strategy teams, and clients to ensure the successful migration of legacy applications. Moreover, Imran exhibits effective communication skills and an eye for quality service.

As a Microsoft Certified and PMI Project Management Professional, Imran can migrate a myriad of difficult technologies. Most recently, he migrated a VFP legacy application which communicated to networking equipment. Testing the application without detailed knowledge of the domain was the real challenge.

Imran also dedicates his time to IoT (Internet of Things), as well as Online Sales, and looks to improve upon all of Macrosoft’s existing verticals.