migrate vb6 to vb.net?

[cingo]

dear all,
i am a newbie in .net

i have a small vb6 standalone exe application that uses an online mysql ODBC database at a database server and some online web pages within it. the users are 30 on the client side and are all at distant(far) locations.

should i migrate from vb6 to vb.net?
Please guide me about the advantages for such software.

also i am concerned about the security of the application in .net..
it seems to be easily decompiled? or de-obfuscated?
will it still remain an exe in vb.net?

what should the publishing options be? if i want to keep the .net application on an application server and let users use it via a website?

thanks in advance.
regards
cingo

[Hack]

Moved to General Developer

In short - yes

We seem to have this topic brought up about once every couple of months.

If you do a search on this, just in this forum section, you will find a number of very, very lenghty threads within which this topic is debated ad nauseum.

[Atheist]

Dont bump your post like that, it's only been 40 minutes since you created this thread, and since there's no people here that get paid for replying to threads, one just has to wait until someone has time to do so ;)

[Pradeep1210]

I'll advice you to migrate to VB.NET (or any other version of Basic) and leave VB6 now, without considering the advantages and disadvantages too much.
This is because VB6 has been officially discontinued, which means that no new features, upgrades etc. would be available. Some of them might become a must in the future you never know (maybe due to security reasons etc.). You would only be able to work with the set of features already available till now.

Pradeep :)

[Shaggy Hiker]

There are several considerations you'd have to think about to make the decision, but one overshadows the others: Do you expect to be changing the program much in the relatively near future?

If the program is pretty stable and unlikely to be added to/altered/updated/etc. in the near future, then you might as well stick with VB6. You have a running program and it isn't going to change, so there's no compelling reason to change the language. On the other hand, if this is a work in progress that will be expanded, altered, etc., then you might as well switch to .NET as soon as possible.

As for your other concerns, they are somewhat less than that one. .NET programs can be decompiled relatively easily. You can use a free obfuscator to make it a little more difficult to decompile, or you can spend big bucks and get a commercial obfuscator that makes the code MUCH more difficult to decompile....or you can think about whether or not your REALLY care. What are you trying to prevent? The possibility that somebody will decompile your program and steal your brilliant algorithm? That's not very likely. Is your program written with secure information hard coded into it? That's not secure in ANY language. For example, about a decade ago, the folks at ID software released the full version of Castle Wolfenstein 3D, which included a hidden maze that had a word at the center of it. The intention was to run a game where the first person to find the word (I think it was Aardwolf) could turn it in to the company for a prize. The game was written in C, and compiled into a binary file, which is as secure as anything VB6 has, yet the contest never got off the ground, as people just used byte editors to snoop the binaries and read the word. If you have secure information in your VB6 app, then the only thing that is protecting you is that people either can't believe you are doing that, or don't care enough to crack your app. In short: Most people don't worry about decompiling because they don't have anything valuable in their code.

Publishing is easier in VB.NET with ClickOnce than it ever was in VB6, so that is actually one of the stronger arguments for switching. You can publish to a web server, and whenever anyone with a connection runs your app, it can check for updates and update itself automatically.

[shukla]

I am also shifting to vb.net.
But as Shaggy Hiker told, if your software is not going to be changed or updated in future, then you can try your new software in vb.net.
I am also upgrading my application which is in vb6.0 now, to vb.net.
Because my application is goiing to be changed so many times in future.
But my application which are completed and not going to be changed, i will not change them for vb.net.
But its my opinion that you can start your new application in vb.net.

[cingo]

thanks all for your reply..

but please tell me about my question

what should the publishing options be? if i want to keep the .net application on an application server and let users use it via a website?


i think i will shift now to .net

[RobDog888]

Thread Moved
Thread Mergered with duplicate and posts cleaned up

[jmcilhinney]

what should the publishing options be? if i want to keep the .net application on an application server and let users use it via a website?http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wh45kb66.aspx

You should read as much of that as possible but the second link, "Choosing a ClickOnce Deployment Strategy", addresses your question.

[RobDog888]

also i am concerned about the security of the application in .net..
Yes, security of your source code from reverse engineering is difficult and could be costly.

Using Reflection one can view source code of an .net exe but you can protect it or at least make it much harder to decide by using an Obfusciator utility to scramble the code. So even if they get to the IL layer its all scrambled or "encrypted". But if a hacker wants your source code of any type project in any language they will get it to varying degrees.