Visual Studio 2005 migration

[scragga]

I apologise if this is posted to the wrong forum.

I currently have applications using a combination of IMAQ and Measurement Studio (also Fieldpoint). Up to now I have remained with Visual Basic 6. I decided not to bother with the first version of Visual Studio .net as migrating my VB6 code was too time consuming and it looked like a bit of a stop gap dog anyway (like windows 98). I now want to standardise on Visual Studio 2005 and especially Visual Basic 2005. However it is very unclear to me whether either or both IMAQ and Meaurement Studio will work with Visual Basic 2005 and what NI's timeline is to update these products. Microsoft have run so late with Visual Studio 2005 launch that I expected all the piggy back developers to be ready immediately - but it appears not. Are we looking at years or months?

Please point me in the right direction to understand where NI is going with Visual Studio 2005

Thanks

Chris Williams

[bilalD]

Migration for VB 6.0 to VB.NET in VS 2005 is not a trivial process. There is a migration wizard in VS 2005 that will help you get started, but that is only the first step. You can find out alot of about the two languages via the following link

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/

ActiveX controls should just work in VS 2005. I am assuming you were using the IMAQ ActiveX controls in VB 6.0. The Measurement Studio ActiveX User Interface controls should work in VB.NET as well. Measurement Studio has native .NET UI controls that will work in VB.NET in VS 2005. You can find out more about that here.

Since there are several significant changes between VB and VB.NET, you should consider the possibility of re-writing your application for VB.NET. Starting from scratch at this point will save you alot of time in the long run and you will find that you will be able to do alot of things using VB.NET that were not able to do previously. Ofcourse this also means that you will need to spend alot of time just learning about the .NET framework and VB.NET. And then writing the application.

You can sign up for the Measurement Studio Beta for VS2005. The current beta up there is for VS 2005 beta 2. We intend to update this beta for the release version of VS 2005 sometime next year. You can sign up for the beta at ni.com/beta.

Let me know if you have any other concerns.

[Naveen S]

Hi Chris,

I am currently working on converting an image analysis application using IMAQ Vision from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic 2005. I was wondering if you decided to complete the migration to VB 2005 and, if so, if you have noticed any improvements in the performance of your software.

Naveen

[Leamount]

Dear Naveen,

No, Visual Studio 2005 came too late for that particular project - also I wanted to make a profit and deliver on time so VB6 was the low risk option.

It all worked out fine in VB6.

Am now too busy to learn Visual Studio 2005 until mid next year.

How about you - do you see enough advantages to justify the migration.

Chris

[Naveen S]

Hi Chris,

I'm still in the process of migrating my application to VB 2005. The project involves real-time image processing for single particle trapping in solution. The multi-threading capabilities of VB 2005 are quite useful, since they allow the image processing and display to be done on separate threads with different priorities. Another major advantage is an improved timer, the new Stopwatch control, that uses the system clock to achieve very high resolution timing. I also appreciate the object-oriented nature of VB 2005, which is useful for writing modular code. When you have time, I think that it might be worth learning more about the language.

Naveen