VB6 to .NET Migration with Francesco Balena
Carl and Richard talk to Francesco Balena about migrating VB6 applications to .NET. Yes, that's still happening! With Microsoft ending support for Windows XP in April 2014, folks that have been hanging onto old platforms and applications are taking another look at migrating. Francesco makes an amazing tool called VB Migration Partner that analyzes VB6 apps to identify what parts of an application can be converted into VB.NET (or C#) and what parts need to be rewritten. While migration is never simple, Francesco provides great advice on how to make it possible. Still got some VB6 in your life?
Guests:
Francesco Balena
Francesco Balena is author of the Programming Visual Basic series (four editions: VB6, VB2002, VB2003, and VB2005) published by Microsoft Press, author of Programming Visual C#: The Base Class Library, co-author of Advanced .NET Framework Programming with VB.NET (with Jeffrey Richter) and Practical Code Guidelines for VB.NET and C# Developers (with Giuseppe Dimauro). He wrote for Visual Studio Magazine, MSDN Magazine, and other technical magazines, spoke at many conferences for developers in US and Europe, and served as Microsoft Regional Director for Italy. He launched a few websites for developers - including www.vb2themax.com which later became www.dotnet2themax.com - and www.vbmigration.com, the only website entirely devoted to VB6-to-.NET migration. Francesco is co-founder of Code Architects, an Italian software company that is member of the Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP, VB Migration Partner), and is the main author of VB Migration Partner, an innovative tool for migrating VB6 apps of any size and complexity to VB.NET and C#.
Links:
- WiX Toolset http://wixtoolset.org/
- DNR episode on the WiX Toolset http://dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=747
- VB Migration Partner http://www.vbmigration.com/