Preparing Your Project for the Upgrade to Visual Basic .NET

Chapter 4

Preparing Your Project for the Upgrade to Visual Basic .NET

Now that you have decided to upgrade to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, it s time to make the modifications necessary to smooth out the upgrade process. In doing so, you need to focus on issues that could get in the way of a straightforward upgrade. If you followed the guidelines in Chapter 3, you should already have a good idea of the potential problem areas in your application. This chapter will help you prepare for your upgrade project by identifying common coding practices that can cause upgrade issues, above and beyond the issues highlighted by the Upgrade Wizard s upgrade report.

Keep in mind that rather than addressing how to upgrade, this chapter focuses on identifying changes that you can make to existing applications to help the upgrade go more smoothly. There are two parts to this topic. First we ll discuss the use of up-to-date language and platform features. Then we ll look at good coding practices and common traps that Visual Basic developers fall into. Where necessary, examples are provided for clarity.