Wolters Kluwer licenses the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion to quickly and cost-effectively
modernize its flagship Accounting/Fiscal software product
Using ArtinSoft’s powerful VB to .NET migration tool to convert their
3M LOC Sistema Professionista to VB.NET, Wolters Kluwer Italia saved 2 years of
work, while increasing developer productivity and ensuring continued application
evolution
Business Situation
Customer Profile
Based in Milan, Italy, IPSOA is part of Wolters Kluwer, a leading global information
services and publishing company. They offer integrated solutions that include content,
software and services, helping its customers to improve productivity and efficiency,
to reduce costs, and to increase their turnover.
Business Situation
IPSOA’s Accounting/Fiscal software product, Sistema Professionista, was a
suite of applications developed in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0. With a total of about
3,000,000 lines of code, the client/server system was deployed on a per-customer
basis, using an installer for each workstation. IPSOA required a more sophisticated
deployment approach for its thousands of clients, plus ensuring continued support
from Microsoft and application evolution while maintaining the current architecture.
Solution
IPSOA licensed ArtinSoft’s Visual Basic Upgrade Companion to migrate the flagship
application to VB.NET. A customized version was in order, since there were explicit
requirements that needed to be addressed, like COM Interoperability to interact
with the libraries and controls used in the original system, mapping of the Datafield
property of some controls to a new generated class, precise solutions for the conversion
of the Recordset Source Property, While statement, Redim and Control Arrays, and
implementing support for additional third-party controls
Benefits
By using the VBUC, IPSOA was able to save 2 years of work. And with ArtinSoft’s
recommended phased upgrade approach, it reduced even further the risk and amount
of allocated resources on the migration project while the development and maintenance
of the VB 6.0 code was also in progress. Overall, the migration to the .NET platform
will strengthen the technological advantage over competing products and will open
the possibilities for quick application enhancement, with highly increased developer
productivity.
Wolters Kluwer is a leading global information services and publishing company.
The company provides products and services for professionals in the health, tax,
accounting, corporate, financial services, legal, and regulatory sectors. Wolters
Kluwer had 2008 annual revenues of €3.4 billion, employs approximately 20,000 people
worldwide, and maintains operations in over 35 countries across Europe, North America,
Asia Pacific, and Latin America.
In Italy, as part of the Legal, Tax & Regulatory Europe division, the company is
known in the market as Wolters Kluwer Italia, which has ten of the most authoritative
and accredited service producer brand names, publishing products, software and services
for the professional market, companies and public administration: Artel, Cedam,
Leggi d’Italia Professionale, Utet Giuridica, Indicitalia, OA Sistemi, Pragma, Mitos,
OSRA and IPSOA.
IPSOA, based in Milan, Italy, offers its integrated solutions that include
content, software and services, as well as traditional and electronic publishing
products like books, magazine and on-offline databases, in order to help its customers
to improve their productivity and efficiency, to reduce costs, and to increase their
turnover.
PSOA’s Accounting/Fiscal software product, Sistema Professionista, was a suite
of applications developed in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, and composed by the following
modules:
- Contabilità
- Cespiti
- Ritenute
- Dichiarazioni fiscali
- Bilancio e Analisi di bilancio
- Bilancio consolidato
- Imposte correnti anticipate e differite
- Parcelle e fatture
- Procedure fallimentari
With a total of almost 3,000,000 lines of VB6 code, the applications were structured
as client-server systems, based upon a Windows interface and with a database back-end
and some server components. The interface and business logic was deployed on the
client machine, while the database was installed on a data server or in the same
client machine, and the Suite component was a startup form used to launch all applications,
and was based on IPSOA’s Framework.
Sistema Professionista was deployed on a per-customer basis, using an installer
for each workstation on which the application needed to be executed. IPSOA required
a more sophisticated approach to deploy the application, since it had to be delivered
to thousands of clients frequently.
Also, IPSOA was looking towards ensuring continued support from Microsoft and application
evolution. Hence, they were considering a migration to.NET, while maintaining the
current application architecture.
Solution
Settling on VB.NET as the target language, IPSOA contacted ArtinSoft regarding the
Visual Basic Upgrade Companion (VBUC). They also got in touch with “Gruppo
Reti”, an Italian IT consulting company with Microsoft .NET skills and experience
with the Sistema Professionista. So ArtinSoft provided a license for a customized
version of the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion, which enabled IPSOA to minimize the
amount of manual effort, duration and costs required to complete the conversion,
and to implement specific code patterns in the resulting .NET application.
A customized version was in order, since IPSOA had explicit requirements that needed
to be addressed. For example, COM Interoperability was to be used in the resulting
.NET version of the application, to interact with the libraries and controls used
in the original Visual Basic 6.0 system. The usage of COM Interop would minimize
the effort and complexity of the upgrade project, though a post-migration replacement
of libraries and controls with .NET equivalents after achieving Functional Equivalence
was considered.
Also, several of the modules from Sistema Professionista used the Datafield property
of some controls, like the TextBox control, to store important information for subsequent
processes. This property was no longer available in the .NET controls and there
is not an equivalent that could be used instead. So ArtinSoft proposed a solution
to this issue by generating a class that inherited from System.Windows.Forms.TextBox
and had a property called DataField. The Visual Basic Upgrade Companion also converted
the VB6 Textbox controls that used the DataField property to the new class, instead
of the native .NET TextBox control.
IPSOA was also planning to use the Third Party control ActiveBar through .NET COM
Interoperability, and the version that was used in the Visual Basic 6.0 application
employed a binary file to store information of the bands. On the other hand, precise
solutions for the conversion of the Recordset Source Property, While statement,
Redim and Control Arrays were also automatically implemented through the use of
the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion.
Applying feasibility and cost-effectiveness criteria, support was also added for
other third-party controls, so that a subset of their Properties, Methods and Events
(PMEs) were automatically converted to new components, as shown in the following
table:
Finally, Sistema Professionista was an application under maintenance and development
of new features, so a methodology was required to incorporate the changes into the
.NET version. ArtinSoft recommended a phased upgrade approach, which reduced even
further the risk associated with the execution of the migration while the development
and maintenance of the Visual Basic 6.0 codebase was also in progress. An additional
advantage of this strategy was the fact that IPSOA would be able to see the results
of the migration sooner, and that they would have to dedicate fewer resources to
the project, and in a gradual manner.
Benefits
“ArtinSoft is a qualified company that has made of the intelligent automation
one of its prerogatives of core business. By using the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion,
IPSOA was able to save 2 years of work, receiving from ArtinSoft’s the support
necessary to customize the tool, which allowed the evolution of the product using
the features of Microsoft’s .NET Framework and the new development tools”,
said Roberto Fusè, IPSOA’s lead resource for the VB6 migration project.
The migration of Sistema Professionista to Microsoft .NET will strengthen the technological
advantage over competing products and, especially, it will open several possibilities
for IPSOA to enhance the application. The new development environment will also
increase the productivity of the developers of the application, and that is a great
advantage, given the amount of requirements from current users of the application.