Transposition - the success story of VB6 migration

Since all of you VB developers in the present or past would probably find it hard to believe that the old VB code can be migrated and modernized into the latest .NET based HTML5 without having to rewrite the application I am feeling I need to write another post on our migration solution. Hopefully, after reading this and the previous post you will be able to understand the different approach of our solution which already helps organizations around the world move away from the constraints of VB6 and free them to access the applications from any computer or browser-supported devices. I will wite on such organization later in this post.

As discussed before the solution is called Instant CloudMove while its main tool is called the Transposition Studio. Why transposition you probably ask yourself?! Well, we found that this term best describes what the tools do. Transposition refers to exchanging elements while everything else remains the same (in mathematics) or moving an element as is from one environment to another (in music). So how dows this relate to software and programming? Well, due to the award-winning Visual WebGui platform we are able to take the source code and put it in a modern technological environment with relatively few adjustments. As you can see in the diagram below Visual WebGui preserved the server centric architecture of client/server applications - enabling the same methodology of work by optimizing the message queue over the web:



Read the full post on ASP.NET Blogs:
Transposition - the success story of VB6 migration

A Visual Studio tool eliminating the need to rewrite for web and mobile

The following A Visual Studio tool eliminating the need to rewrite for web and mobile post was published on Visual WebGui Blog

We have already covered the BYOD requirements that an application developer is faced with, in an earlier blog entry (How to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to a .NET application). In that entry we emphasized the fact that application developers will need to prepare their applications for serving multiple types of devices on multiple platforms, ranging from the smallest mobile devices up to and beyond the largest desktop devices.

The experts prediction is that in the near future we will see that the majority of all applications developed, will need to be able to service these multiple platforms and devices in one way or the other, in order to survive.

Where does that leave our legacy single-platform targeted desktop applications, in which we have even invested decades of manpower?

We could build a User Interface front-end for those legacy applications, still running the legacy application as a back-end. That does in some cases require considerable effort, and it doesn't change the fact that the back-end is still running the legacy, and potentially obsoleted technology, code. On top of that, we will have two tiers to manage, the back-end and the new front-end.

We could rewrite or convert the legacy application for the new technology. For that there are multiple code conversion tools out there on the market that will assist you and make your conversion process a bit easier than to do it all "by hand". All the current tools in this category have one thing in common though, they do code conversion for you, and some of them even pretty well. You will still need to rewrite or reconstruct the parts of code where there is no corresponding library on the target platform.

We could migrate the legacy application to the new technology using any of the migration solutions available. The currently available solution base their migration on a fixed set of black-box built-in rules with no (or very limited) ability to adapt to your special migration needs. In many cases this will only help with the migration of a portion of your code, still requiring rewriting or reconstruction of considerable percentage of your code.

Taking on such a conversion or migration task means that you will use the code conversion/migration tool of your choice to convert/migrate your code. You will most likely have huge sections of code that need to be rewritten and/or reconstructed because there is no direct correspondence between the libraries used on the legacy application and the ones on your new platform.  As soon as you start the conversion process, you will be converting the legacy application version that is current at that time, which can present major additional efforts in both management and coding if you need to continue maintaining the legacy application after you have started the conversion process.

What you really need here is a conversion tool that "knows" more about your legacy source application platform and the target platform and "knows" how to "map" between the two whenever possible.  In addition, you often may need to continue development on the legacy application while you are converting/migrating. What you need is to lift that requirement and not freeze the development of the legacy application.

Based on these needs, Gizmox's built its solution and called the action transposition rather than migration or conversion. The Transposition studio is a rule based migration and modernization solution. It comes with built-in rules that will automatically handle about 95% of the conversion right out of the box. In some cases it will be able to migrate all your code. In other cases there will be portions that you need to work on yourself, but the entire work is done within the Transposition studio which is integrated into Visual Studio and offers you wizards and guiding tools to minimize risk and required resources.

What distinguishes the Transposition from other migration solutions are mainly three things:

First, it's migration rules are fully open and adjustable so you can change the default migration at will and thereby gradually adapting it to your own specific needs. It uses a very powerful pattern matching engine along with equally powerful template engine that enables you to make very advanced and complex conversions on small and large code segments, all by defining a set of rules and templates within the Transposition studio itself. The Transposition Studio integrates directly into the Visual Studio development environment and you have the legacy source code right at your fingertips and also allows you to override the defined rules by directly customizing parts of the code according to your needs. The rules and templates are stored in user definable libraries, where you can build multiple sets of related rules, which can then be used for, or shared with, other migration projects.

Second, there is no need to freeze development on the legacy source application, so you can continue developing your old application, while you are transposing. Using traditional migration/conversion procedures, you do a one time migration/conversion of the code, and then you start reconstructing/rewriting the parts of the outcome where necessary. This is completely different in Gizmox's Transposition studio. The majority of the required work is spent on defining migration rules and templates within the Transposition studio itself and then you simply re-run the transposition (migration) process to produce a new set of target code. You re-run the transposition as often as you need/like and it is only at the last stage, when you have migrated everything that can be migrated, that you start working directly on the target platform code.

Third, one of the target platform options is a cloud enabled and mobile enabled ASP.NET application with HTML5 frond end (based on the Visual WebGui framework) which will fulfill the BYOD requirement of modern applications perfectly.
I invite you to download and try the new Transposition Studio from Gizmox on a demo application.

The link between Windows CE/Windows Mobile applications, ASP.NET and HTML5 - Visual WebGui Blog

I would like to share a post from the Visual WebGui Blog on ASP.NET. The post The link between Windows CE/Windows Mobile applications, ASP.NET and HTML5 discusses the developer's alternatives when facing the need to update applications that were written for Windows CE and Windows Mobile.

It also presents a case where a large company converted an old Windows CE application into a web-based mobile application with HTML5 front-end. This allowed the company to upgrade the UI and freed them from the limitation to a certain mobile platform, so now they can use any Smatphone and Tablet they want.

New Enhanced Visual WebGui WINWEB and .NETHTML5 Versions

After a long wait and huge anticipation from the Visual WebGui community, I am happy to announce the release of new versions for the WINWEB and .NETHTML5 branches. The new 6.4.0 Release d and 6.4.0 beta3 versions are available after an extensive work on core capabilities of Visual WebGui including extension of existing controls and adding new controls such as Strip Controls, RibbonBar, DataGridView, ComboBox, PropertyGrid and RadioButton as well as some major enhancements to both versions in terms of cross-browser support and performance.

We apologize for the delay in the release of those most expected versions, but we believe that the extra time lead to a more mature and complete product. As you can see the changelog is pretty long and includes a list of enhancements, new features and bug fixes: http://visualwebgui.com/Developers/KB/tabid/654/article/w_changelogs/Default.aspx

The new versions are available for all versions with open sources for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010.
You are welcome to download the WINWEB Free Trial and the Free .NETHTML5 beta on the downloads page.

Original post: New Enhanced Visual WebGui WINWEB and .NETHTML5 Versions

Application Migration: Windows/VB6 Apps to ASP.NET HTML5

Check out the following post inviting to our free webinar we are holding this month in collaboration with Forrester Research:
Application Migration: Windows/VB6 Apps to ASP.NET HTML5

The webinar is free and it will will introduce the substantial changes brought on by the move to Web Applications and Open Web architectures, and the challenges it places on application development shops. We’ll also introduce how we at Gizmox are helping client navigate this mobile shift and evolve existing Windows applications with a new set of Transposition tools called Instant CloudMove.
We will discuss the alternatives in the market to evolve your existing applications and focus on our transposition tools that reduce migration risk, minimize costs, and accelerate your time to market.
So if you have locally installed Windows, VB6 or ASP applications that you are looking to enable as SaaS, offer over private or public Cloud platforms or allow end users with mobile accessibility then you shouldn't miss this webinar.

Extending Windows Applications to HTML5 and Mobile Has Never Been Easier
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST

Free registration:
http://www.visualwebgui.com/Gizmox/Landing/tabid/674/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/987/Extending-Windows-Applications-to-HTML5-and-Mobile-Has-Never-Been-Easier.aspx

Visual WebGui HTML5 Framework Makes .NET developers Mobile Developers - Visual WebGui Blog

The new mobile framework extends to the Enterprise Mobility the revolution that Visual WebGui brought to Enterprise RIA Applications with almost 1 million downloads and around 40,000 deployments. Just like Visual WebGui for Web, EnterpriseMobile also provides a classic .NET development paradigm within Visual Studio. This allows leveraging existing development skillset for building HTML5 mobile applications and extending enterprise IT to the post PC era.

The new framework is optimized for enterprise mobility and supports the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend. It produces totally secured cross platform and cross device HTML5 applications that doesn't bring or hold any data on the device (the entire logic and data stays behind the Firewall) and doesn’t require strong local computing resources. It also provides a native mobile user experience such as gestures. On the roadmap are utilization of local device resources via PhoneGap (open source) integration and Citrix receiver, along with Form Factor and Device awareness.

The current preview version provides limited functionality and capabilities and includes about 14 controls which were adapted for mobile requirements in terms of performance and user experience. Currently, the framework supports iOS and Android devices or Chrome and Safari and offers only one out-of-the-box theme - iOS like, but it is possible to customize it or create other themes as well. Upcoming versions will offer more capabilities including an HTML5 off-line feature that will ensure application availability even when there is no internet/network connectivity. We encourage you to download and "play" around with this version and will deeply appreciate your feedback. There is also a live HTML5 mobile mail application that was developed with the framework and available for browsing from mobile devices via this url:
http://67.205.112.81:8080/m



Click here to Download the free preview and more info.

Windows application to a cross-platform web-based solution without a rewrite

A Windows healthcare application for clinics and physicians needed a cost-effective way to accommodate all operating systems without reducing the existing functionality and security. Since users use a variety of operating systems, it was determined that a web-based version of the application was the best way to overcome those installation roadblocks. This was also a great opportunity to enable tablet access as well and reach users who use tablets such as the iPad for work.

A solution to turn this local Windows application to a cross-platform web-based solution was needed. It was important to complete the migration without having to manually rewrite the application and with minimal changes and resources involved. Running some assessment tools on the existing application provided estimations that almost 98% of the code could be automatically migrated into rich ASP.NET using the Instant CloudMove tools. “When we received the project estimations from the migration experts at Gizmox we were a bit skeptical at first as it seemed too good to be true” said Dr. Wendy Graham, Mihealth CEO and added “not only that the solution was exactly what we needed but it was also priced lower than all other alternatives.”

Those optimistic estimations turned into reality very quickly as the code migration was completed by Gizmox in only a couple of weeks. Then, in less than 2 months the entire project was completed and the migrated web-based physician tool was ready for delivery.

The final product was a completely identical version to the Windows application, with all of the functionalities, appearance, and feel, but was available through a web-browser from anywhere in the world. This allowed Mihealth to reach all clinics/physicians without turning away any potential customers. Implementation of mihealth™ also became much easier, as sales representatives did not face any of the previous complications when installing the application in a busy clinic on unfamiliar hardware or operating software. “Migrating mihealth to a web-based technology means we can now reach more customers with much less operative efforts and resources on our side. I can definitely say it made us more competitive” concluded Dr. Graham.

The original story was published here.

We just released a new mobile app that allows our Visual WebGui users, followers and community members to stay connected anytime, anywhere.

The app provides an easy access to the latest updates, forum posts, tweets, YouTube movies and more from a centralized location. The application which was created using Conduit's tools supports Android, iPhone, Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices.

Feedback and suggestions for improving this great tool are much welcome!

All you have to do is scan the QR code with your phone's camera or go to this URL from any browser or any of the devices above.


http://vwg.mobapp.at/

You are also invited to read our recent announcement about the upcoming .NET Mobile Framework.

Visual WebGui helps Dawsons put its Windows Forms HR system on the web

Dawsons needed to upgrade their existing Windows Forms LAN human resources system to allow better and flexible access to the ever increasing data size as labor hire clients are demanding easy access to copies of tickets and licenses and etc. The company has some 30,000 applicants on file, but access to this data has been complex and limited with the current system.

Therefore the IT department was asked to find a possible solutions that would allow creating a web based application while utilizing as much of the existing Windows Forms code as possible. Visual WebGui was found to be highly regarded in many frameworks comparisons so the team decided to give Visual WebGui a try. It didn’t take long for them to recognize that the Visual WebGui controls appear and react over the web the same as desktop controls. This and the fact that most of the code was directly ported which saved Dawsons hundreds of development hours are what make Visual WebGui so unique and productive.

“My first impression of Visual WebGui was perhaps disbelief. Not being a seasoned Web programmer, I initially found it hard to accept so much functionality from a web based application. Also, the speed is exceptional” said John Sainsbury, Financial Controller of the Dawsons Group who added “Since working with Visual WebGui, I have showcased parts of the application to our major clients, some of whom use SAP portals, and they are amazed.”

The result was so satisfying that the company is now looking to produce a mobile version for accessing the labor pool on the go. “By removing the barriers of the local network, Visual WebGui has changed how we can do business” said Lloyd Everist, General Manager Dawsons Group.

Read more >

Tips for IT Security in RIAs - Visual WebGui Blog


Rich internet applications are growing fast in the business and enterprise application landscape as more and more software managers and corporate decision makers are electing to place rich internet applications (RIA's) into their organizations. But with the many advantages of rich internet applications over the client/server deployments, organizations also find many new aspects they need to master and overcome - one of them is understanding the new security vulnerabilities of the rich web based applications and taking the right measurments to protect their systems.

The following guide posted on Visual Studio Magazine contributes to understanding RIA security vulnerabilities and how to cope with them.

Security - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

This is the 4th and last (but not least) post discussing the challenges in developing business RIA applications.

According to leading IT analysts, web applications and in particular Ajax RIA’s have become the most vulnerable elements of enterprise IT infrastructure. As an increasing number of organizations come to depend on rich Internet-based applications that leverage the power of AJAX, Silverlight Flash and the emerging HTML5 technologies, businesses must find ways to secure their web applications and protect sensitive data that may be exposed through the use of these technologies.

The post describes Visual WebGui "Empty Client" architecture as a great solution to avoid security volnurabilities and thus minimizes the need to search for security solutions as it is designed to simplify, enhance, and protect the deployment of complex, enterprise level applications.

Security - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

Why Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development

Since the demo of Windows 8 given by Microsoft Vice President Julie Larson-Green at the recent D9 conference windows developers have been described in many articles as feeling "Horrified" "Worried" "Deeply Concerned".

But no matter what Microsoft confirms about Windows 8 come September, whether they decide to stop supporting .NET or put more emphasis on the advantages of HTML5 over it, VWG enables .NET to appear as HTML/HTML5 on the client. Visual WebGui ensures that Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development.

Read the full blog post on GeeksWithBlogs:

Why Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development

State Management - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

A major part of any web-app developers process, is to decide whether or not to keep the state of a particular control or function and what data to retrieve from the server. While with stateful environment developers work within a structured, well-defined and visual environment in a stateless environment developers work in a fluid environment and have to take critical decisions and choices by themselves. The stateless environment is much more complex and risky as the developer also needs to write explicit code for each element based on their decision. Visual WebGui offers a solution that unlike ASP.NET and most web frameworks is stateful.

The following blog post describes the unique Visual WebGui approach that allows a stateful solution while eliminating the usual obstacles of storing the state of a web application.
State Management - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

Gizmox Ranked in Top Ten of Cloud Vendors by SD Times

Gizmox Ranked in Top Ten of Cloud Vendors by SD Times

For the 2nd year in a row Gizmox is recognized by SD Time as one of the top industry leaders and innovators that "write the songs that make the whole world sing".

See SD Times 100 Winners list

Visual WebGui has recently released an HTML5 supported (beta) version of its platform. Needless to say this new .NETHTML5 version generated a lot of buzz and interest which were followed by many inquiries so I want to share more information and the Gizmox vision for the HTML5 version.

To learn more about this new version read the full blog post.
Bridging the .NET power and HTML5 richness

Getting From .NET to HTML5 without Getting Lost

You can’t go anywhere online these days without reading something about the new web standard: HTML5. HTML5, the latest version of the hyper-text mark-up language, enables a better web experience, with richer graphics, animation and web multimedia. Many pundits see it as the next generation web - web 3.0 if you like - and an open standard replacement for propriety plug-ins, Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash. With so much hype surrounding HTML5, and the benefits it brings, there’s one major question that’s being asked: can we Microsoft .NET developers create HTML5?


Fortunately Visual WebGui ProStudio .NETHTML5 enables just that. It’s a unique, end-to-end combination of pure Microsoft .NET development, abstraction of Java Script / HTML5 functionality through jQuery and the abstraction of Ajax, database connectivity and data binding. In its release of ProStudio .NETHTML5, Gizmox, the creator of Visual WebGui has created the only total development environment in which programmers can develop efficient-running, data-centric HTML5 web apps in Visual Studio.

This has several applications (ignore the pun):

1. It empowers jQuery developers to go data centric.
   Using its abstraction of data binding and built-in state management, ProStudio. NETHTML5 opens the way for UI developers to create data-driven, line-of-business applications, while staying focused on their core skills of user interface building.
2. It allows the creation of HTML5 web applications now.
   The unification of the Visual WebGui development platform and the latest jQuery animation and rich web interface function library empowers web application developers to take advantage of HTML5's power and build applications having browser compatibility across all mobile, tablet and desktop environments.
3. It is the ease of data-binding with standard .NET practices
   VWG takes care of AJAX, session management and lets developers easily bind to data using VB.NET or C#
4. It is a .NET framework.
   The only simple way to do HTML5 or jQuery development in .NET. That means the experience of developing desktop .NET applications, with the ease of deployment of a standard Window Forms application and ASP.NET deployment on IIS, which amounts to no more than copy/pasting a couple of DLLs. 
5. Uncompromised security by design.
   VWG with built-in jQuery produces rich ASP.NET, Ajax-based web applications with a high performance interface whose security cannot be compromised.

Visual WebGui ProStudio .NETHTML5, by incorporating virtualization and streaming paradigms, creates a unique HTML5 development environment. This enables stateful applications that are fully scalable and have no client security vulnerabilities whatsoever.

The VWG development framework is integrated into Visual Studio, allowing .NET programming code, Visual WebGui data binding functions and jQuery to achieve a potent combination of technologies that achieves a high degree of abstraction for defining screen behavior and communication between database and browser based applications. In other words, this is the only way to write .NET and get HTML5.

Please click here to see an HTML5 email app developed with ProStudio .NETHTML5.

To download a trial of the ProStudio .NETHTML5 please visit the Download page now.

Everyone is talking about Cloud computing and moving to the cloud (public or private), but very few have actually done so. The reason is that the process of migrating existing applications to the cloud is a lot more complicated than you may think and this is where we come in.

In the past year we have been intensively working on a tool-based solution that gives application developers and enterprises a simpler way to migrate to the cloud. And now we are proud to present the Visual WebGui Instant CloudMove, which is the only solution that transforms desktop applications’ code to the cloud, in addition to web and mobile deployments.

To learn more, you can check out our press release and watch the video below. And if you have any feedback, we’d love to hear about it.

How to use the Visual WebGui Automatic Migration AssessmentTool

Using Dundas Charts library to render charts in Visual WebGui - Itzik Spitzen

Interesting blog post by Itzik Spitzen Using Dundas Charts library to render charts in Visual WebGui

AssessmentTool webcast announced

I would like to invite you to join us for a webcast on Thursday, Dec 2nd @ 17:00 GMT+2 which will explain and show how to run the new Visual WebGui AssessmentTool and to understand the report it generates. We will run the AssessmentTool on .NET compiled Assemblies (dlls and exes) and learn how to assess the readiness of the application for Cloud/SaaS in terms of the complexities of the manual adjustments that are required for the migration.




The AssessmentTool webcast is the 1st of a series of sessions presenting the new CloudMove migration tools suite. However, we will also talk about the rest of the CloudMove solution roadmap in this session and mainly the upcoming TranspositionTool that will allow to automatically convert .NET Windows Forms code into a Cloud/SaaS ready code using VWG platform.

You can learn more about the AssessmentTool here.

Free registration link.