Visual Basic 6.0 or C# to Web

Upgrade your strategic Visual Basic 6.0 or C# assets to a web-based platform


ArtinSoft has been taking customer’s applications from legacy platforms to equivalent applications running in the latest technology for over 15 years. By leveraging this extensive migration expertise it is now possible to take your applications to the next level: to the web using Silverlight and Windows Azure

Accelerating cloud adoption video

The following figure shows the target architecture for applications ported to Silverlight:

Target architecture for applications ported to Silverlight

Silverlight applications run on the client machine, not the server, so they do not need to refresh the browser to update data on the interface. As shown in the figure above, access to databases is done through WCF Services, and the code that interacts with the database runs on the server and not on the client.

Learn more about Silverlight

How does it work?

Silverlight App and ASp.NET App

Layout conversion

All WinForms controls will be converted to the Silverlight equivalents. While in WinForms the layout is defined in the designer file of the form, with Silverlight it happens in a XAML file. So the source code in the designer file should be converted to an XML tags.

Silverlight Layour conversion

Interaction with layout controls

The source code that interacts with the layout controls requires some adjustments, since all the controls are changed to the Silverlight equivalents.

Silverlight Interaction with layout controls

MDI Application

Silverlight doesn’t have built-in the concept of MDI Forms, so this functionality needs to be emulated.

  • The form show is different
  • The current active form must be handled manually
  • The cascade/title window functionality must be created

Silverlight MDI Application

File System Access

For security reasons, Silverlight is very restrictive about the file system access. Only the File name (without the path info) and a stream pointer can be used from Silverlight. If the application is running Out of the box the access to the user directory is almost unrestricted. For example it allows getting the complete file name and browsing directories.

Silverlight File System Access




Engaging with ArtinSoft

Learn more about how our expert consulting services can aid your organization to web-enable applications by completing our Contact Us form, request a services quote, or sending us an email to info@artinsoft.com. One of ArtinSoft’s representatives will contact you back in one or two business days.