Re: General question about upgrade path

From: Ralph (msnews.20.nt_consulting32_at_spamgourmet.com)
Date: 02/28/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 21:09:56 -0600

"Stephen Bowyer" <stephen.bowyer@nospamdsl.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:42222853$0$12822$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com...
> I have an application at work with about 20 users on a VB5 front end to an
> Access database. While the app does just about everything I want it to,
I'm
> wondering where do I go from here? I looked at VB6 and judged that it
> wasn't worth the hassle of upgrading. I've bought and installed .net on
my
> home XP machine, but feel the learning curve is going to be pretty steep,
> and the entire app will need to be rewritten. I'd like to continue to
> enhance the original VB 5 app on my home PC, but cannot get VB5 to run
> properly on it (falls over when using any DAO object). Any development I
> now have to do on a W2000 workstation at work, and I don't really have the
> time. Although the app appears to run fine on the XP workstations at
work,
> I'm worried that at some point in the future Microsoft are not going to
> continue to support this.
>
> What's my best option do you reckon?
>
> Steve.
>

Steve,

I heard about three jumbled questions in your post. So here are three
jumbled responses. Please bear in mind that I haven't a clue about your
problem domain, career interests, or . <g>

1) Do I need to move to VB6?

You said it wasn't worth the hassle, yet you can't seem to run VB5 on XP at
home? IMHO, it seems a simple case of "Well, Duh!" and upgrading to VB6. I
never had good luck with VB5 it seemed just a stop-gap between VB4 and VB6.
However, I am alone in that opinion. There are many classic VBers that swear
by it - offering the opinion that VB6 didn't bring anything new to the
table, except a new round of troublesome controls. <g>

But frankly I don't think VB5 is the real problem with DAO and XP - more
likely it is the drivers, Jet pack, etc. Perhaps you need to upgrade
DAO/Jet? Microsoft has published a series of OS specific Jet 4 SPs. Fetch
the latest one for your OS.

There are always issues with an OS port (compile on one, distribute to
another). The best that will happen is nothing. <g> The ideal scenario is to
build and test on each platform. But going from a 'newer' OS to a 'older' OS
is usually easier, than vice versa. It is simply a matter of it being easier
to make the 'newer' more backward compatible than making the 'older' more
future compatible. In general, developing on XP and migrating to Win2k
shouldn't be as bad as going the other way.

3) Do I need to move to .Net?

This is a question that has been asked by just about everyone in the VB
'Classic' groups - either of themselves or from others. Answers seem to
range from "Hell No, I Won't Go", "I'll Find Another Toy", to "Time To Move
On".

Personally, I have no pride and find myself going where the dollars are -
that is .NET. Unfortunately, .NET is NOT an upgrade, it is a totally new
ball game and just about everything you thought you knew will be of
historical interest only. If you want to stay 'mainstream', if you want to
stay with MS, then .net is inevitable. You can move today or move tomorrow,
but you will move.

If you do go, my only advice is to do C#. Predictions are hard, especially
about the future <g>, but MS is less likely to rip the rug out from under C#
as they have done multiple times with VB.

There is a close analogy between the Coke snafu 20 years ago and MS's
treatment of VB. The Coke mistake came about because the Coke Execs became
too concerned about the "Pepsi Tests", became terrified about market-share,
and had become a collection of extremely bright knowledgeable people - with
no real sense of what "Coca Cola" was or how it had brought them there. In
my opinion MS became too concerned with Java/Unix, terrified about
market-share, and became a collection of extremely bright knowledgeable
people - with no real sense of what "Visual Basic" is or how it has got them
where they are today.

To Coke's credit the president realized his mistake, swallowed his pride,
and bought back Coke Classic. Can Billy do the same? I keep hearing rumors -
but likely that is just some kind of background wishful thinking.

Much of the pain of .net will be alleviated when the Framework is finally
encapsulated within the OS ~ but that is at least another couple of years
off.

3) Continue to support legacy apps running on newer OSs?

Yes, MS has always been good about backward compatiblity. I see no major
stubbling blocks - just a degradation in services you will be able to access
with older tools.

-ralph