Why migrate VB6 to .NET code in 2024
Given today’s quite volatile market conditions, business leaders are moving towards minimizing their expenses and optimizing everyday workflows.
Among these, many companies across industries keep utilizing Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6) as their primary platform – a challenge estimably exacerbated by the official cessation of its mainline support dating back April 8 of 2008. While some larger organizations possess expertise for transitioning from VB6 to more modern technologies, smaller companies must choose between maintaining the already outdated platform, sacrificing modernization and outsourcing the project.
But is VB6 to .NET migration worth it?
In the following article, we’ll discuss the importance of strategic VB6 migration to .NET.
VB6 marked for death
Be it discontinued support, the demand for discovering new capabilities, or changing regulatory requirements, business leaders are moving away from VB6 IDE Windows 11 and earlier Windows versions.
Visual Basic versions 1.0-6.0 were popular all throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s until retired in 2008. Visual Basic, being simple and versatile, was utilized for building desktop applications, database applications, games, utilities, and custom business applications for handling inventory management, and other daily tasks.
VB6 applications becoming irrelevant: a trend across domains
The trend towards migration is gaining more momentum for several good reasons:
- Microsoft VB is an obsolete technology, and researchers are finding more loopholes every day
- Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 security risks score 9.3, which means data breaches can have great impact on both business reputation and resources
- Equally important, the technology isn’t receiving regular updates and patches
- The technology can’t handle object-oriented programming, exception handling, and multi-threading, causing deteriorated business performance
With constantly growing concerns towards compliance, more companies are seeking contemporary platforms. Prioritizing monitoring and compliance with internal corporate policies and external regulatory requirements, strategic-thinking organizations are transitioning from unsupported, deprecated technologies.
VB to .NET conversion becoming inevitable?
No doubt, Visual Basic 6.0 programming has long been popular and preferred for the following reasons:
- User-friendly interface and uncomplicated programming environment
- Pre-built controls (buttons, labels, text boxes)
- Rapid Application Development (RAD), which enables to quickly build prototypes and applications
- Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which enables the design, coding, testing, and deployment of applications all within one platform
But inevitably, Visual Basic 6 code being unsupported is causing several constraints:
- System stability and reliability
- System integration with more modern technologies
- The need for modern user interfaces and features
- The difficulty in meeting regulatory requirements
VB to .NET conversion: diving deeper
Besides clear VB6 to .NET performance optimization benefits, the approach also offers:
System stability and reliability
VB6 applications lack necessary system updates and patches, thereby generating unaddressed vulnerabilities. With .NET development services, you’ll leverage regular updates and patches, comprehensive documentation and support, extensive testing capabilities, reliable garbage collection, and scalability.
System integration with more modern technologies
VB6 applications lack compatibility with more modern standards, respectively, hindering seamless integration. With .NET development solutions, you harness REST APIs, cloud services, OAuth and OpenID Connect, microservices architecture, and compatibility with other modern frameworks.
The need for modern user interfaces and features
VB6 software is characterized by insufficiency of support for modern interface elements and responsiveness. The modern .NET framework is known for extensive interface controls and libraries, cross-platform capabilities, the integration with modern client-side technologies, and more.
The difficulty in meeting regulatory requirements
VB6 code lacks built-in data encryption, audit trails, and other critical features to meet regulatory standards. .NET offers security features that enable regulatory compliance – data encryption, audit logging, and others.
On how to convert VB6 to VB.NET accurately
First, automated VB6 to .NET migration
Automated migration involves utilizing specialized software to convert VB6 code into appropriate .NET code. This involves the analysis of the VB6 codebase, the identification of elements, and translation of components from outdated Visual Basic 6.0 into .NET code.
Automated migration preserves functionality, ensures consistency, and minimizes manual efforts and errors. Despite providing several benefits, this approach also necessitates subsequent improvements, which include removing duplicates, upgrading syntax and controls, and fixing data declarations.
Then manual VB6 to .NET migration
Manual migration requires successive, manual rewriting to translate VB6 code into corresponding .NET code. This involves the analysis of the existing codebase, the understanding of underlying business functionality, and the manual rewriting of the VB6 application in the .NET framework.
Manual migration must follow automated migration for refinement, customization, optimization, and more. This approach does require specific expertise, however, carries great importance.
Data migration
Data migration is another important stage of .NET app development, quite challenging without expertise:
- Schema conversion to a format compatible with the .NET environment
- Data extraction from existing data sources in the VB6 application
- Data transformation to match data structure and formats being required by the .NET application, typically including data cleansing and normalization
- Data loading into the data storage being used by the .NET application, which includes inserting records into databases, uploading files, and changing data formats
- Data validation to ensure data accuracy and integrity
- Data synchronization to ensure data consistency and avoid data loss and duplication
Quality assurance
Quality assurance, an as critical stage of .NET application development, is easier but important to enable:
- Data integrity by eliminating data loss, corruption, duplication, and inconsistencies
- Risk management by identifying security vulnerabilities, compatibility issues, functional regression, performance degradation, and other potential problems
- Application functionality by addressing any inconsistencies and ensure expected behavior
- Regulatory compliance by implementing mentioned practices
Functional equivalence when converting VB6 to .NET code
Another takeaway we’ve mentioned in one of our recent articles when discussing VB6 to .NET migration – functional equivalence is the first priority.
Approaching migration, business leaders might prefer to rewrite separate parts of their legacy applications, thereby risking time-to-market delays, budget overruns, unexpected bottlenecks, and also resource constraints. First migrating and only then rewriting individual parts of the converted application preserves functionality, leaving opportunities for customization without complications.
How we can help
Abto Software, a VB6 migration partner, has proven tech expertise for transitioning mission-critical applications.
Our engineers handle discovery and planning, code assessment and preparation, and smooth VB6 migration. Our clients forget about operational and performance shortfalls, security vulnerabilities, compatibility issues, and other common challenges that come with maintaining a legacy VB6 application.
Work with a VB migration partner to demonstrate innovation readiness.
We cover:
- Business analysis and consulting
- Project setup and kick-off
- Code migration
- Code finalization
- Acceptance testing and improvement
- Quality assurance and deployment
You enjoy:
- Higher performance and efficiency
- Expanded functionality and scalability
- Improved security through updates and patches
- Enhanced compatibility across platforms and devices
- Long-term support and maintenance
- Cloud compatibility
Abto Software – your partner for seamless VB6 to .NET conversion!
FAQ
It’s up to you to decide, but consider the following:
- VB6 lost mainline support, while the .NET platform is maintained and enjoys active support
- VB6’s outdated security mechanisms are replaced by more robust features in the .NET platform
- .NET supports object-oriented programming, which enables code maintainability
- .NET grants the access to the .NET framework class library, which enables modern functions & utilities
- .NET offers improved performance, flexibility, scalability, and enhanced business operation
- .NET enables cross-platform compatibility
And there are even more benefits to it!
There can be plenty of nuances, in particular the following:
- Memory management
- Garbage collection
- Database access layer migration
- Event handling model differences
- API differences
- Third-party libraries and components
And many other challenges.
When approaching such projects, business leaders can choose between various different options:
- A complete VB6 rewrite
- A gradual VB6 migration
- Architecture refactoring
- Hybrid migration to introduce modern components
And some other strategies.
But our key recommendation is to delegate migration to professionals if you lack the required expertise.
