Custom Maps for Graphical Controls

This document describes the main steps and considerations to have in mind when using the VB6 AI Migrator to upgrade additional Third Party Controls into their .NET counterparts. After reading this document you will be able to:

• Analyze your VB6 code to quantify the amount of manual efforts required to upgrade a legacy control to .NET
• Use the VB6 AI Migrator Custom Maps functionality to port legacy controls into .NET inherent controls or newer versions of a given control from the same or other vendors.

Introduction to the VB6 AI Migrator

The VB6 AI Migrator is an automated source code migration tool created by GAPVelocity AI. It has become the preferred approach for best-in-class companies around the world to upgrade their VB6 applications to .NET. It migrates VB6 code to both VB.NET and C#, and, if combined with the ASP Upgrade Companion, it also upgrades ASP to ASP.NET.

This document elaborates how the VB6 AI Migrator migrates 3rd-party graphical components. This makes it very common for most of the business related applications to have Third Party Controls.

The VB6 AI Migrator transforms the most commonly used controls from the VB6 toolbox directly to the native .NET controls included in the .NET Framework. The resulting .NET designer code implements all the most important graphical attributes of the original controls without any tie to proprietary runtimes.

The typical VB6 application uses several third party controls, drawn from a rich portfolio of graphical components that supply functionality; surpassing VB6’s out of the box components. This makes it difficult to determine a most-common usage list that satisfies the migration requirements of all our customers. Currently the VB6 AI Migrator, driven by customer demand, upgrades graphical user interface controls from more than 25 different vendors. In addition to the built in migrations, GAP has included the ability to customize the VB6 AI Migrator to transform particular third party components to their equivalent in .NET, be this either .NET built-in or third party controls or even custom-developed helper classes.

The full list of built-in supported controls can be found at the following URL: https://www.gapvelocity.ai/vbtonet/optional-third-party-library-mappings

The main objective of this document is to provide VB6 AI Migrator Enterprise Edition users with a comprehensible guide on how to support additional third party components by using Custom Maps.

For a complete technical specification of the VB6 AI Migrator please visit the VBtoNET technical website at www.vbtonet.com, which contains technical details, techniques and features applied to upgrade VB6 features.

Content

• The VB6 AI Migrator and graphical control migration
  • Built-in VB6 controls
  • Third party controls
  • Supported and Unsupported Third Party Controls
• How does Custom Maps work?
• Using Custom Maps for graphical control migration
  • General Methodology
    • Identify the legacy types to be upgraded
    • Identify the type members used throughout the code
    • Creating a Custom Maps file for the transformation table
    • Manual Changes Stage
  • Using a Helper class with Custom Maps
    • Identify the legacy types to be upgraded
    • Identify the type members used throughout the code
    • Creating a Custom Maps file for the transformation table
    • Manual fix/implementation stage