Book excerpts:

Those who're familiar with Visual Basic but aren't familiar with Visual Basic .NET may be wondering why there would be a book about upgrading. "How different can Visual Basic .NET be?", those people might ask. The fact is, Visual Basic .NET is not merely Visual Basic 6 with a few new features added on. Instead, Visual Basic has been thoroughly redesigned and restructured. The language has been modernized, with new, richer object models for data, forms, transactions, and almost everything else. The file formats have also changed.

Unfortunately, these changes mean that Visual Basic .NET is not entirely backward compatible with Visual Basic 6. Projects from previous versions need to be upgraded before they will compile and run in Visual Basic .NET. The Upgrade Wizard handles much of this work, but most real-world projects will require additional modifications before they can be run. Some people consider moving applications from Visual Basic 6 to .NET to be a migration rather than an upgrade.

This is where this book come to address. It is is a complete technical guide to upgrading Microsoft Visual Basic 6 applications to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, covering all aspects of upgrading from APIs to ZOrders. This book includes chapters on fixing upgrade issues with forms, language, data access and COM+ Services. It also shows how to add value to upgraded applications with XML Web Services, ADO.NET and .NET remoting. It shows global architectural advise, and includes a reference of function and object model changes from Visual Basic 6. The text is came with hundreds of before-and-after code samples.

Intended Audience:

All in all, this book is an essential reference for Visual Basic 6 programmers who are considering moving up to Visual Basic .NET.

Reviews:

Amazon.com

:) "It will save you hours of programming and frustration as the authors drawing on there own wealth of .net experience cleverly guide you through the stormy waters of system upgrades."

:) "If you are currently writing Visual Basic 6, you can learn a lot about setting up your own code to make sure it does not become legacy code when you move to .NET."

:) "This book does the job. It demystifies the migration story. It shows how to migrate apps to vb.net, and has complete reference material about potential problems and how to fix them."