Dennis Hayes

If you're one of the many who have VB6 code, you have three basic options: stay with VB6, convert to .NET, or rewrite from scratch. In this article, we will look at converting VB6 code to VB.NET and C#. I'll discuss when it makes sense to convert versus staying with VB6 or rewriting from scratch. I will cover what converts well and what does not, different ways to do the conversion, how to get code ready to convert, and handling issues after the conversion. Executive Overview First, let's get an executive-level overview of where VB6 and VB.NET are at in their life cycles. Note that when I mention VB.NET in this article, I mean all three versions (2002, 2003, 2005). When I talk about a specific version, I will specify the version (such as VB.NET 2002). With the advances in VB.NET 2003, as well as its compatibility with VB.NET 2002, there is little reason to migrate ... (more)

Converting VB6 to VB.NET, Part II

Last month (Vol. 2, issue 9), I gave an executive overview of the conversion process, and started looking at converting general VB6 code to VB.NET. This month I will finish general conversions, including DLLs, then start on database conversions. Next month, in the final segment, I will cover converting ASP.NET Web pages, and look at converting to VB.NET 2005 and C#. Nothing Is Perfect After the conversion wizard is done, the upgrade report will probably contain a list of many issues. A lot of these issues are minor things that nothing can be done about, but which in most cases wil... (more)

Book Review: Pro ADO.NET 2.0

This book bills itself as the only ADO.NET you will ever need. This is a bit boisterous, but mostly true. This book covers pretty much all facets of ADO.NET programming, and covers them well. This well-written book can take an ADO.NET novice, and advance him or her to being an ADO.NET pro. This book concentrates on ADO.NET, so to be a complete database programmer, you will need other books to cover the non-ADO.NET parts of database programming; in particular, this book does not really cover SQL syntax, or non-programming aspects of databases. Experienced database programmers will ... (more)

.NET Book Review — Practical Mono

Mark Mamone is a program lead and solutions architect for British Telecom, and he's been involved in .NET since Beta 1; he's presently spearheading a Mono-driven project for BT. Mamone has co-authored several books, including Beginning Fedora 2, Beginning Red Hat Linux 9, and Professional Windows Forms. The first chapter of this book gives an overview of .NET, a history of the Mono project, and instructions on downloading and installing Mono on Linux and Windows. OSX is mentioned, but specific instructions aren't included. Moppix, the "live" version of Mono that runs from a boot... (more)

Portable.NET Releases New Version

Portable.NET has released PNET 0.8, its first packaged release in more than a year. There were many improvements over the course of the year, but the biggest were associated with the upgrade to the new Libjit JIT engine. The source code is at http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/dotgnu-pnet, and Boris Manojlovic has created windows installer that can be downloaded at www.steki.net/dotGNU/JIT/dotGNU_0_8_0.exe. Last year Trumpf, a German manufacturer of industrial lasers, offered two $4,000 prizes for improvements to Protable.NET (MB volume 4 issue 1 & issue 11). The prizes w... (more)