How to migrate a VB6 application

This post is a quick overview of an Abto Software blog article.

Visual Basic — a well-known programming language that’s losing its popularity and slowly getting abandoned. Despite enjoying enormous application across industries — healthcare, retail, finance & banking, construction — the environment has been already marked for death.

In this detailed guide, we’ll discuss the process of moving from legacy VB6 applications to modern .NET code.

Migrating legacy VB6 applications: getting started

Migrating legacy VB6 applications: getting started, by Abto Software

Step 1: don’t underestimate internal evaluation

A thought-out VB6 to .NET migration strategy begins with initial internal evaluation, typically including:

Codebase analysis

At first, you have to perform codebase analysis to understand application complexity and maintainability:

• Assess the code size & structure
• Assess the code complexity
• Identify any external libraries, COM components, ActiveX controls, as well as other third-party services
• Look for code duplicates/redundancy — these areas are candidates for refactoring

Performance assessment

Next thing, you have to conduct performance assessment to identify code bottlenecks and malfunctions:

• Measure the application’s efficiency in its current state
• These metrics can serve as benchmarks to compare application versions