Getting started with embedded Visual Basic

[divined]

Hello everybody

I`m thinking of porting an application I`ve built for Visual Basic 6 to a mobile platform! What do I need to get started?

thx, in advance

George Papadopoulos

[Shaggy Hiker]

.NET.

Seriously, eVB is the only option prior to .NET, and it was a pretty poor option. eVB used VB Script rather than true VB, and that was not just a little worse. Many features were missing, and many were poorly implemented. For one thing, everything was a variant. You could call things longs, strings, doubles, etc., but they weren't. They were all variants, and there was no type checking going on.

With the .NET CF, you actually have a real language that runs well. If you will be working with a database, you have SQL Server CE, with a full suite of ADO.NET functionality to work with it. This means that working with a database in the .NET CF is pretty doggone good, whereas it was marginal with Pocket Access (which may not exist anymore) and eVB.

There are some limitations to .NET CF, but the biggest one for you might be that you have a VB6 program you are trying to port. Since you almost certainly will have to re-write the interface, moving to .NET may not make that much of a difference, but it would mean a new language. On the other hand, VB Script will mean a newly diluted language anyways.

[divined]

thanks, for the analysis! Rather thorough and insightful! The problem is twofold. Firstly, I`m using VB6 which as I read is poorly implemented in the form of eVB. Secondly, I`m using MySQL as my main database in the application. I have no idea if MySQL is supported under Windows CE.

thx, again

George Papadopoulos

[si_the_geek]

I've been using eVB a bit, and I can recommend using .Net if it is available. Espeically as it cannot be guaranteed that eVB programs will be compatible with the next OS (officially not in PPC2003, but they still work!).

However, eVB isn't unusable, and converting VB6 programs is fairly simple as long as they can fit on the screen (you need to re-make the forms in eVB, but can copy almost all of the code across).

A few issues with eVB to note:

• the string function Left only works in modules (in forms you need to use VBA.Left, or switch to Mid ).
• the With statement doesnt work.
• there arent many control types available (all the standard ones are there, and a grid like the Flexgrid - but with some features missing).
• error handling is limited to "resume next", and errors caused by "with"/"left" are almost random (place and error)
• you cannot debug the program (I'm not sure how good the .Net version is now - it apparently used to be quite poor)
• it does not get Compiled, so everything will be slower than a VB equivalent.

As for databases, ADOCE (basically an Access data source) is installed in PPC. You can store/retrieve data easily, and can have this synchronised to a desktop Access DB along with email etc. No idea about other DB's, I very much doubt mySQL would work with eVB even if they have a "mobile" db.