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How to Overcome Stress from Technology

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:28:03 +0000

Article by Michelle Howard Smith

iPods, iPads, Blackberries, DVRs, Kindles and more all fascinating forms of technology.

As the technology era continues to explode, there’s something interesting that’s exploding with it. Stress.

With the increase of technology, there was supposed to be an increase in the ease of which we are able to live our daily lives. Yet, instead of making our lives easier and less stressful, we find ourselves in bondage to stress from technology.

Easier or More Stressful?

Everywhere you go, people are glued to technology like what is now called the Crackberry. Life is getting busier and people are more stressed out than ever before.

While technology is able to make our lives easier, the misuse of technology is what’s causing stress. For example, high speed internet helps you to obtain important information is seconds. Yet, getting sucked into spending hours on the computer in the black hole of the internet leads to stress from technology that is steadily increasing.

In spite of the risk of finding yourself stressed from abuse of technology, you need not return to the ice age. There are things that can be done to keep technology from ruling your life.

Symptoms of Stress from Technology

Yes, it’s easy to get sucked in to spending endless hours wrapping yourself in technology. Surfing the web, chatting it up for hours on Twitter or Facebook, and watching one YouTube video after another are examples.

This overuse of technology can cause problems like headaches, eye problems, and sleep deprivation. These physical symptoms lead to a backlog of responsibilities, a breakdown of family relationships and poor performance on the job.

So how do you fix it so that technology isn’t ruling your life?

Determine what’s best for your life

Just because the latest technological gadget is made available for sale, doesn’t mean you have to buy it. What works for one person’s life doesn’t mean it will work for yours.

One family may find having a DVR indispensable because they can more readily control what their children are watching on television. In another case, a single male may find having a DVR enabling him to become a couch potato.

Some people’s lives are made easier with iPhones. Others find that this latest form of telephone technology causes them undue stress. So, before investing in the latest and greatest new technology, determine if it will fit in with your lifestyle and if it will make your life easier or more complex.

Set some boundaries

Simply, establish time limits when using technology. Kitchen timers work very well for reminding you when to get off the computer, the TV or the high tech game system.

Let’s say you set a time of one hour on the computer or television. Stick to it. Once that timer goes off, shut everything down so you won’t be tempted to overspend your time.

Establish Technology-Free Areas

There should be specific places in your home where you are completely disconnected from technology like the bathroom and the dinner table.

In addition, disconnecting from technology in certain areas in your home, establish certain times where technology is to be out of commission. Perhaps you could designate an hour before bed where you just read (an actual book that’s NOT online) or play cards.

Whatever your desired time of the day, establishing boundaries around the use of technology will allow you to relax and unwind. Consciously disengaging also helps you to foster stronger bonds with your friends and family, while reducing your stress levels.

Technology can be the source of some of your greatest assistance or the source of your biggest stress. Find the right path to using technology wisely and you won’t find yourself battling stress from technology.

How to Uninstall Antivirus Live program Thoroughly from My PC

admin — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 10:14:38 +0000

Do you have Antivirus Live program installed on your computer? Do you know how to uninstall Antivirus Live program computer? Or Do you encounter problems when uninstall Antivirus Live program from windows? No matter what case you are, learn how to uninstall Antivirus Live program completely now.

Some computer users will delete related folders of Antivirus Live program when they want delete the program. It is the worst operation when removing Antivirus Live program, because deleting some folders will damage Antivirus Live program instead of removing the whole program.

Common way to uninstall Antivirus Live program

You should at least uninstall Antivirus Live program from windows add/remove program. If there is a built-in uninstaller of Antivirus Live program, it would be better. Here are specific steps:

1. Windows add/remove program: click Start – go to Control Panel – Run Add or Remove Programs- find out Antivirus Live program on the list – Click Remove button and follow the instruction next to uninstall Antivirus Live program.

2. Built-in uninstaller of Antivirus Live program: click Start – click All programs” – find out Antivirus Live program – choose the uninstall option

After you uninstall Antivirus Live program by either above methods, it is highly recommended to clean up windows registry to remove remained registry value of Antivirus Live program. If you do not know how to manually remove Antivirus Live program registry entries, you can equip your computer with a registry cleaner.

Best Solution to Uninstall Antivirus Live program

Do you thank it is troublesome to completely uninstall Antivirus Live program? Do you fail to uninstall Antivirus Live program in above methods? Here is a fast and guaranteed way to uninstall Antivirus Live program completely. Perfect Uninstall provides 100% guaranteed uninstall for Antivirus Live program and other unwanted programs. All you should do is free download the powerful uninstaller program now.

Grabbing the Latest Interesting Tidbits From Technology Blogs

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:28:51 +0000

Technology is one of the most interesting subjects to follow. As technology is constantly evolving, you get new and exciting stuff happening on a daily basis. It is fun and exciting to check on the latest headlines to see what is new, what is in, and what is out. You can get your daily dosage of technology news from various sources. Established technology sites. These are huge technology sites that are well recognized in the industry. Sites like CNET, Tomshardware, etc. offer fresh and interesting news on a daily basis. In fact, some sites are so popular that hardware manufacturers actually send them free hardware so that the editors can test them out and post reviews on their sites. That means, you, as the reader, get first hand information on the performance of the latest hardware. News search engines. News search engines are not dedicated to technology news, but you can use them to search for your favorite news. Simply type in the keywords (e.g. “latest CPU”), and the latest and most relevant news will be presented to you. You can even subscribe to the news based on those keywords. Technology blog search. Technology blog search engines like Technorati are very interesting. They do not work the same way as search engines. You have to wait for the search engines to crawl a site before you get updated content. For blog search engines, the blog actually sends a ping to the search engine, letting the crawler know that there is new content. It’s interesting to observe that blog search engines always tend to get the word out faster than traditional search engines. Perhaps that’s why they are gaining in popularity. Technology blogs. From the search engines, you can easily locate technology blogs. There are thousands and thousands of technology blogs on the Internet. So what is it that separates the quality blogs from the not-go-great technology blogs? Usually, you can tell if a blog is a quality blog or not just be reading the first few posts. On the Internet, everything is about content. So killer content is what you are looking for. For technology blogs, killer content means more than just being grammatically correct. It also means more than just copy and paste specifications. Specifications of technological gadgets are important, but once the specifications have been publicly released, almost every blog can post such information. In other words, the information is not unique. What you want is unique information – information that cannot easily be found elsewhere. For example, a technology blog can hand pick interesting technology gadgets and write exclusive reviews on these gadgets. You can read about the latest voice activated alarm clock, or the latest gaming laptop, 3G iPhone, etc. Since these gadgets appeal to the masses, you are assured of interesting content. Those are the blogs that are worth reading and following. You may then choose to follow those news sources by subscribing to their RSS feeds. You can do this using an RSS reader. If you do not want to use a feed reader, you can simply bookmark the sites and visit them at a later date.

Simplify Sustainability Program Management with Business ERP Software from Lawson

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:10:07 +0000

Manufacturers and distributors in all industries and regions of the world are reevaluating how their businesses impact the environment in which they operate, including their partners, customers and communities. From design and sourcing to production and distribution, manufacturers and distributors are rapidly establishing sustainability or “green” programs across their supply chain because they increasingly make real business sense. With Lawson business ERP software, companies can manage their environmental programs efficiently and achieve the green targets that many companies are now obliged to attain.

Most of these initiatives are at early stages, as companies evaluate how sustainability can become a more integral part of their business strategy, reputation and brand. Companies are focusing on their biggest cost areas and on areas that have the most significant impact on the environment. Sustainability programs leading the way for manufacturers and distributors include facility energy reduction, facility emissions reduction, and reduction of fuel consumption and emissions from their fleet and related product logistics.

Companies have also begun information technology (IT) initiatives to support their sustainability programs. However, these initiatives are far from mature. In most instances, sustainability is evolving largely as a disconnected set of activities, where individuals or departments use spreadsheets or home-grown software applications to track their efforts and report results. There is a definite need for integration and automation.

Business ERP software promises to be an important tool for companies to better manage sustainability programs across their supply chain. By using business software, companies can easily manage the sustainability programs across their entire organization in one place, gain greater visibility into their existing sustainability programs, and produce better results.

The Strategic Role of Business ERP Software in the Sustainable Supply Chain

We can break down business software’s role in sustainability programs into three elements: enterprise resource planning (ERP) software as the foundation; internal controls for governance, risk management and compliance; and enterprise performance management. Each of these levels is important to the effective execution, management and measurement of a manufacturer or distributor’s sustainability program.

The Foundation: ERP

Because ERP systems are often integrated and enterprise-wide, they can sensibly form the foundation for managing sustainability programs. One approach to the problem is to align ERP applications with the sustainability programs a company is implementing, and then incorporate internal control and enterprise performance management solutions to create a complete solution.

The reason why ERP systems can work so well as a foundation for sustainability program is that they help manage the transactions that flow through the enterprise and establish “one version of the truth.” For instance, the ERP system can show that a supplier is on the company’s preferred supplier list, which may mean the supplier meets company standards related to child labor or organic sourcing. Often, these metrics correspond to specific measurement metrics within the Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

Governance, Risk Management and Compliance

Almost all sustainability programs contain elements of governance, risk management, and compliance. At this level, an internal control system allows companies to more effectively and efficiently manage these requirements ? whether government mandated or established by the company ? by providing an automated solution to manage control activities.

An internal control system can centralize the information manufacturers and distributors need to manage sustainability activities within any functional area (e.g., supply chain management) and across the enterprise. The approach focuses on four areas:

1.Documentation. Provide a central repository for all governance, risk management, and compliance-related documents that is accessible to auditors and managers, and where documents are updated as close to real time as possible.

2.Testing. Track testing activities, including what was tested, when, by whom, results, and remedial actions when testing failed.

3.User interface. Communicate all key information to the appropriate audiences through an intuitive, secure, role-based, user-defined portal.

4.Monitoring. Enable companies to manage key events and transactions within their ERP and other business applications to easily present any significant or material events to the appropriate audience.

As a result, the reporting layer can include the documentation or history of on-site audits of business practices for all the preferred suppliers listed in the ERP system.

Enterprise Performance Management

Enterprise performance management systems deliver business intelligence via dashboards, scorecards, reports and alerts that allow knowledge workers to thoroughly analyze complex problems and then take action. They are what let us know that sustainability objectives are being met or whether action needs to be taken to get the effort back on track. Role-based dashboards work as the heart of the solution and act as a gateway for sustainability activity management. Workers can quickly navigate from alerts to detailed reports to the actual transactional data.

Enterprise performance management also includes a workflow layer. The workflow layer is mandatory for managing the complex interactions of individuals engaged in sustainability activities, such as monitoring carbon dioxide emissions or energy usage. System-based controls, paperless activities, and electronic approvals promote repeatable and sustainable actions and allow manufacturers and distributors to easily monitor key events, while enabling simpler audit trails and reducing risk.

Protect Your Businesses With Hosting From Dps Software

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:20:41 +0000

In January 2005 Carlisle was hit by wild weather which plunged half the county into darkness and brought boats on to the city streets. Floods of up to 13 feet deep put Cumbria into headlines worldwide. It is no wonder that in the aftermath of such a disaster, the residents of Carlisle feared any warnings of flooding.Determined not to be defeated by flooding again, Carlisle residents took measures to protect their homes and businesses, so that when heavy rain had caused flood warnings to be issued in October 2008, they could be ready.One such Carlisle-based business, Malcolm Dodds Solicitors, took out a hosting policy with DPS Software in order to protect their IT infrastructure in the face of such disasters.Hosting is the process by which software that is traditionally run from a desktop PC is run over the internet in virtually the same fashion. All that is required is broadband internet access to the DPS data centre, other than that, users go about their work in exactly the same way. As IT infrastructure and maintenance is carried out off site, flooding and other such disasters do not effect IT systems and provided the building is accessible, hosting allows clients to carry on working as normal.Hosting ensures that software is kept up to date while the host carries the burden of keeping hardware performance checked and maintained. In addition, the need for IT staff and expertise is removed to the hosting provider. This allows firms to capitalise on not only a wider variety of software, but also more advanced versions of hardware. This is beneficial for firms as they can use the same software as much larger competitors offering high levels of client service without the major upfront costs. Malcom Dodds commented: “Hosting guarantees a trouble free software system. I no longer have any networking problems and I have not had to call on engineers since I went hosted. This has saved me a considerable amount of money, time, and lowered my blood pressure to acceptable levels!”He added, “Updates were becoming a problem with crime as the LSC introduced contract changes on a regular basis and I was having to install all these on the computer on my network, but these are now dealt with by DPS.”“I have always found the support staff at DPS to be excellent since I became a client over 14 years ago. It also makes the system more mobile and I can access my case management system from anywhere and particularly with the advent of digital dictation working away from the office becomes a viable alternative. It is all worth serious consideration.”

Profiting From Software As A Product

admin — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:12:32 +0000

When thinking about creating a digital product, most internet marketers’ first thoughts run to info products. But take a look at some well known marketers like Armand Morin — while he has published info, most of his products are software based.

Probably the biggest reason people don’t consider creating software is the thought that they have to do it themselves — so if you’re not a programmer, you’re sunk.

Aren’t you?

While I will admit that being a programmer can give you an advantage, it doesn’t always. Sometimes it gets in the way of marketing your product, so don’t let the lack of coding experience stop you. You can hire people to do the coding while you concentrate on the marketing — most of the time that’s the best way to handle it.

In this article I’m going to give you some hints that will make your software creation efforts smooth sailing, even with someone else doing the actual programming.

Spec It Out

Before finding someone who can code your application, you need to come up with the specifications, or specs, for your program. That means you need to know what the program will do and how it will act — from the inside, out.

Of course, you can just give an outline of what you want your program to do and let the programmer go to town on it, but that’s a recipe for disaster. The more detail you can give, the more likely you’ll end up with what you want.

Even after years of writing specs sometimes I’ll end up getting what I asked for — and not what I wanted. There’s almost no such thing as a spec that’s too detailed.

When writing a spec, remember that you usually don’t care about what goes on under the hood — you shouldn’t be concerned with how something is accomplished — that’s something the programmer will think about. You just need to make sure that each piece of the program is clearly defined.

A great way to make sure you have all your bases covered is to create a non-working prototype. If you have a program such as VB.Net Express, you can drag-and-drop controls into a window, and move them around until the screen looks the way you want.

Then, take a screenshot of that window and write down how each control should act, what each button should do, etc. A programmer can take a series of screenshots and explanations like that and come up with the program you’re looking for.

Also, by creating a visual representation of every part of your program, you’re less likely to forget something that’s vital to have. And that will save you money down the road.

Finding A Programmer

Once you have your program spec’d out, it’s time to look for a programmer. If you want to work with someone local, you can look on Craigslist or find someone from a local college. What I’ve always done has been to hire someone online, from a place like RentACoder.com (friends of mine have said good things about elance.com, too).

You place your spec online and programmers from around the world will bid on the job. You can look at samples of their previous work, take their bids into account, and choose someone to write your program.

What’s More Profitable, Info Or Software?

That’s a question with a solid answer — it depends. =;)

Really, there’s no way to know — people have made millions from info products, and people have made millions from software. I’ll be honest, there are some costs associated with software products that info products don’t have, such as tech support, but software can still be a big money maker.

I have launched software products and ended up making more than $250,000 over the life of the product. But I’ve also launched some products, stood back after the dust cleared, and said, “What happened?!?”

Case Study: Sonic Info Builder (Disaster?)

Let me give you an example of a software project of mine that flopped. I came up with the idea for Sonic Info Builder, a way to combine audio, video, PDF files, and HTML files into a single “multimedia ebook.” Instead of writing it myself I used RentACoder and paid $450 for the first version.

By the time the first version was finished I realized the program needed better features (because I didn’t spec it out well enough), so I hired the guy to make an upgrade. Total spent was about $950.

I launched Sonic Info Builder and made a huge marketing error (that may be the subject of another article) which literally stopped the sales after about 48 hours. After coming to my senses I tried to get the momentum going again but it was too late. The product fizzled.

Don’t get me wrong, the product itself was (and is) good — I used it myself quite a bit to create info products. But I didn’t sell enough copies to make it “hot.”

So, did I waste my $950? Not in the slightest. Because I ended up selling 81 copies at $97 each, for a gross of $7,857! Even after paying the programmer and the few affiliates that were left, I made several thousand dollars PLUS got a great new tool out of the deal!

The Moral Of The Story

I wanted to share that story to let you know that not every software product out there makes a zillion bucks. But if you know your market and create a product they want, it would be pretty hard not to make a profit.

Do your research into what kind of software is needed, create a detailed spec including screenshots, hire a programmer online, and then market the heck out of your new software!

Offshore Web Outsourcing From India

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:45:06 +0000

Offshoreweboutsourcing is one of the top Indian website designing & web development Company providing IT related solution. Offshoreweboutsourcing is a global IT solutions services provider company focused on delivering affordable business and technology solutions. Our experienced management team offers you solutions that are tailor-made for your business needs and ensure exceptional returns on investment. Our comprehensive portfolio of software services cover different industries and our client base include all size companies’ viz. small, medium and large companies. Offshoreweboutsourcing lucratively work in the areas of web designing, web application development, multimedia development, data processing, photo retouching, E-business solutions and more.Offshoreweboutsourcing provides a comprehensive range of web related services including offshore website development, multimedia, web development, web designing, e-commerce development, data conversion, photo retouching and Search engine marketing or SEO. Our Programming includes: ASP, .Net Development, PHP Programming, Database Development, CMS Solutions and Web Applications development. We specialize in Internet technologies and have skills and experience in programming for both UNIX and Windows platforms. We also have extensive web design skills in HTML, Cold Fusion, Photoshop, Flash, ASP, MSSQL, VB, ASP.Net and VB.Net. Our Data Operation services include data conversion, data consolidations, assimilations and data entry services, which includes offline, online data entry, etc… Our photo retouching services include image Photo Restoration, Photo Colorization, & processing solutions. Offshoreweboutsourcing offshore dedicated team is the best solution if you are involved in ongoing development or support projects as it works as an extension of your in-house team and knows how to rapidly implement services for your needs.

Technology Products Exported from Japan

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:04:40 +0000

Article by Chris Cornell

Technology by definition is the usage and knowledge of tools, machines, craft, skills, science etc. Today technology refers to the use of electronics, computers, computer chips, electronic circuits, silicon chips, telecommunications, and electronic consumer goods. More often, today the word technology is substituted with the word information technology. The characteristics and capacity of technology are not limited to a specific body of knowledge or a set of systems. It incorporates all electronic devices, microchips, and computerized systems. All electronic gadgets that we use in our daily routine are technology. Bigger technology items are power-generating machines, electric power plants, flirtation plants; drilling machines etc., every single item that has an element of science applied to it is a part of technology.Technology is the backbone of Japanese economy. Japan’s economy is rapidly growing due to its vast and distinctive technology products. It is economically the third largest country in the world. Although there are many other technology market leaders in the world, Japanese companies are known among the best and the most efficient. The science and technology in Japan has its major focus on consumer electronics, robotics and automotives, and it is well known for its state of the art, innovative and completely unimaginable technological products. The Japanese technological exports are greatly influenced by its aerospace products. Companies like Fuji, Sumitomo, and Mitsubishi are among the best-known aerospace manufacture companies in the world, and are actively developing and manufacturing different aerospace machines along with different international alliances. Other technology products that play vital role in developing the country’s economy through trade are laptops, camera, consumer electronic devices, power generation plants, electric power generation equipment. Sony, Kenwood, Sharp, Konica, Toshiba, Hitachi, Canon, Sanyo, Seiko, Mitsubishi Electric, and Nikon are a few renowned names of Japanese Technology and Export market. Different technology items from the above-mentioned companies are exported to different countries around the world. One of the latest technological exports that Japan is seeking for is of geothermal power technology. Japan is looking closely at countries that have capacity and plans for geothermal energy growth. Further Japan also looks forward to the possibility of exporting nuclear technology exports. It is reported that in the second half of the year 2010, Japan had initiated its coalition of nuclear technology exports with India on exceptional basis. As technology itself is limitless, the Japanese production and development in the field of technology is also infinite. Thereby, the exports of Japanese technology are extensive and immense.

About the Author

Chris enjoys writing articles on topics like dry cabinets and dry boxes. Visit to read more detail.

Generate PDF from HTML with C# in ASP.NET

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:22:48 +0000

PDF Duo .Net is a converting component for use in ASP.NET (VB, C# etc.) and enables to convert HTML to PDF. The main class HtmlToPdf provides several methods and properties to enable multi-purpose customization of the resulting PDF. Main functions allow to convert HTML represented as a File, Page from Url address, Stream or as a String.Developers can easily invoke the converting component in their own application or website projects on base of ASP.NET. To deploy the PDF Duo .Net component you will need only three lines of code. Installing package is provided with fully featured demos written in both C# and Visual Basic. Simple examples with source code help you using the PDF Duo .Net component to successfully convert HTML to PDF.I have used PDFDuo-NET.dll (version 2.3) in my project which is very useful. First, you need to convert content of your ASPX to HTML and then converted that HTML content into a PDF file or another way which I use is to create a simple HTML string and then convert it.See below C# code:using System;using System.Web;using System.Web.UI;using System.IO;using DuoDimension;public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string html = “

” + “

Product	Quantity	Cost
Product Name 1	5	$100
Product Name 2	15	$300
Product Name 3	55	$500

“; string pdf = “pdf_file.pdf”; DuoDimension.HtmlToPdf conv = new DuoDimension.HtmlToPdf(); conv.PageInfo.PageFormat = ePageFormat.A4; conv.PdfDocumentInfo.Title = “Generate PDF from HTML source”; conv.Header = “
HTML table Example“; try { conv.OpenHTML(html); conv.SavePDF(MapPath(“~/Reports/”) + pdf); } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } }}Adobe’s PDF format is one of the most widely accepted document formats in use today. Most users and clients expect that the software you write will be able to generate and work with PDFs. Unfortunately, however, Adobe does not offer a free SDK that you can download and use; you have to pay to license the API.Statically creating PDF files is quite simple. Applications, such as OpenOffice.org Writer, give the user options to export a word processor document as a PDF file. Users can even find utilities that allow them to “print” directly to a PDF file. Features like these are well-known to end users and are useful for creating a PDF based off a document originally created in another format.But what about dynamic PDF generation? Some programs need to be able to write out PDF files. PDF Duo .NET alleviates this problem. It will give you the ability to add PDF functionality to your applications. Using PDF Duo .NET, you can create PDF by converting HTML string or file, so you can deliver the functionality your users expect.It is up to you how you generate your HTML from your data source and then convert it to PDF or another option is to convert your ASPX to HTML first and then to PDF. This need to be done because PDF Duo .NET component can only works with clear html format. It did not support for asp:control and runat=server tag for now. You can apply styleshhet to tables, h1, h2, paragraph, and all others necessary stylesheet tag to complete your PDF.PDF Duo .NET is absolutely independent, doesn’t require any additional components and really appropriate for ASP.NET websites. The component is written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. PDF Duo .NET is a library that allows you to generate (convert) PDF documents from HTML web page.For more information about the component please visit the product page:http://www.duodimension.com/html_pdf_asp.net/component_html_pdf.aspxIf you have any questions or concerns about component, let us know:{support@duodimension.com }

When it is crunch time: Migrating from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .Net/2005

admin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:46:16 +0000

Abstract

As a Visual Basic 6.0 programmer, what is the roadmap forward for your applications? As Visual Basic 6.0 becomes ‘deprecated technology’ what will you do with your enterprise class applications written in Visual Basic 6.0. This article is the musings of a developer that has been looking at migrating existing enterprise-class Visual Basic 6.0 applications to Visual Basic 2005.

Introduction

If you have been a serious Visual Basic 6.0 programmer with very sizeable code investments in Visual Basic (we have 22 enterprise level applications), at least 18 of which are written with Microsoft Visual Basic, crunch time comes when you begin to think or when you decide to advance your applications to new versions. Crunch time comes when all of a sudden, your Visual Basic 6.0 projects don’t open properly anymore in the Visual Basic 6.0 IDE (especially when running on Windows Vista with Visual Studio 2005 installed). Crunch time comes most especially when it dawns on you that you are basically using ‘deprecated’ technology, that between Visual Studio 6.0 (which contained Visual Basic 6.0) and Visual Studio 2008 (the latest version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio development suite), they have been 4 (four) new versions of Visual Basic.

Crunch time is the realization that for your software business to live, you will have to do something about your existing Visual Basic 6.0 applications. Our purpose in writing this article is to share our experiences of what we found as we endeavored to start to upgrade our Visual Basic 6.0 applications, and to discuss some of the touch decisions and choices that will undoubtedly have to be made.

Appraising the current Visual Basic situation!

What made Visual Basic special was its power, elegance and simplicity! It largely retained the style and syntax of the Basic language as we knew it i.e. if you had been using GW Basic, QBasic, Microsoft Basic Professional Development System (we shall call of these ‘Microsoft’s Basic’), etc, you could look at Visual Basic code and read it and understand it. Changing over from those early flavors of Microsoft’s implementation of the Basic programming language to Visual Basic was thus not difficult. In fact, the skills you learnt from using those early implementations of Basic made it easy and possible to immediately start building Windows database applications on Microsoft Access 2 using then Access Basic as implemented on those versions of Microsoft Access even though you had to learn a few new keywords and perhaps had to deal with the situation that some language features you knew had been removed!

Further evolutions of Microsoft’s Basic implementations ensured that the Basic language as we knew it was preserved and skills of the Visual Basic programmer were further enhanced when Microsoft made Visual Basic the ‘unified programming/macro environment’ for its leading Microsoft Office suite of productivity applications as well as the premier scripting language for its ASP (Active Server Pages) Web development system. Despite the very slight variations between Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and VBScript, Microsoft’s Basic was Microsoft’s Basic and it was not difficult for the Visual Basic Programmer or someone with skills in some other implementation of Basic for that matter to be able to switch between any of these three core environments or implementations of Microsoft’s Basic!

Now coming to Visual Basic 6, the most powerful and elegant release of these flavors (prior to the .NET flavors) of Microsoft’s Basic, the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) emphasized a componentized systems design and development approach in which the meat of your application (data access code, data manipulation code and business rules) could all be built as COM (Component Object Model) components hosted on MTS/COM+. Your application front-end (Visual Basic Forms or ASP Web Pages) could then call these components to obtain any services required. The backend could be any database system that had an ODBC Driver or OLE DB provider. The front-end as already noted could of course be Visual Basic Forms (if you wanted your application to run as a Windows application) or ASP (if you wanted your application to run as a Web application).

Your data-aware classes could easily establish connections to the database and then create recordset objects in its Init event that could then be returned to a calling application by calling the GetDataMember method of such a class.

Even in terms of data access technology, if you had been using DAO (Data-Access Objects) or RDO (Remote Data Objects) in versions of Visual Basic prior to version 6, changing over to using ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) was not very difficult since both technologies had similar terminology and interface (e.g. A recordset object in DAO was similar in concept to a Recordset Object in ADO) and methods of processing the objects returned.

This then is a general and short summary of what Basic programmers using Microsoft’s implementation of that language have had to deal with until the arrival of Visual Basic .NET flavors of Basic.

What is all the Hullaballoo about?

Visual Basic programmers expected Microsoft to maintain the look and feel of Microsoft’s Basic that we had always known (especially in the language implementation). But behold! What did Microsoft choose to do? They decided to fulfill the biblical prophecy recorded at Zephaniah 3:9 which states ‘For then I shall give the peoples a change to a pure language, in order for them to call upon the name of Jehovah, in order to serve him shoulder to shoulder’.

The attempt to fulfill this biblical prophecy resulted in Microsoft’s attempt to create the New Jerusalem (the .NET Framework) and of course as we now know it, the .NET Framework languages! The result has been a massive genetic modification of the Visual Basic language and an attempted premature extinction of ‘perceived dianosaurs’ (e.g. Visual FoxPro).

If you are a lover of ‘game meat’ and Visual Basic prior to .NET was a charming wild mountain goat (an Ibex on the Highlands of Ethiopia), and you were then given the ‘new ‘ Visual Basic (i.e. the .NET Flavors of Visual Basic), you would not want to eat the meat at all because the color of the animal has changed, its size has changed (it looks more bloated), its natural smell has changed (it smells not like Basic but like C/C++), even its meat tastes different (not the C/C++ like syntax for writing code)…the grand creator (Microsoft) says it is the same or better but we all (aspiring citizens of the New Jerusalem) can see it is not! You cannot even open a Visual Basic 6.0 project in Visual Basic 2005 and expect it to run…it is that bad!

Crunch Time!

The million dollar question then is ‘If you are a Visual Basic 6.0 Programmer with significant code investments, what would you do?’ Should you migrate to other implementations of the Basic Programming language such as REALbasic 2009 (from Real Software Inc) or Liberty Basic? Should you try Visual Basic 6 lookalikes that also offer multi-platform compatibility such as Jabaco 1.4 (by Manuel Siekmann) or should you just rewrite your code in Visual Basic 2005/.NET? What alternatives did we find and what choices will have to be made?

Jabaco: Jabaco is startlingly like Visual Basic 6.0. Even the startup forms, property windows, toolbox, project explorer are astonishingly like Visual Basic. What is more, even the code syntax you write is pure VB 6-like! We made a copy of our Fixed Assets Software system and then opened it in Jabaco (we are using Windows Vista Home Basic) and the conversion process was seamless. To run the code, we made some minor changes (e.g. Converting Currency to Double) or removing Windows Controls such as the toolbar control an
d that was that! The structure of the Jabaco code, its keywords, its syntax, the functions and procedures are Visual Basic 6 alike. Even the way you make your Exe’s after writing your program was simple and straight forward. If you are a Visual Basic 6.0 programmer, and you are looking for a secure non-Microsoft way forward for your projects, you will feel instantly at home with Jabaco 1.4 from the very minute you start the application…you can start writing tons of code immediately! When we tried to run our program (both on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista Home), we were pleased to see that it could run without hitches! Jabaco would compile your application to Java byte code. In addition, Jabaco is free! The big cat is certainly prowling – power, elegance, speed, simplicity, multi-platform capability by compiling to Java plus a pure preservation of the spirit of Visual Basic…this is Jabaco!

Liberty Basic: Liberty Basic appear to offer a nice RAD look and feel! The method for building your application is reverse to what you normally do with Visual Basic 6 where you would draw your form’s on a Canvas! Liberty Basic is indeed a free-spirit, a true implementation of the Basic Programming Language! We did not test drive this tool! You would definitely have to look at this one for yourself…we have not evaluated this tool closely!

True Basic: True Basic is another viable alternative to Visual Basic! This implementation of the Basic programming language is touted as the true descendant of the original Dartmouth Basic and is available in Silver, Bronze and Gold editions. Again, we could not test drive this tool but product descriptions sure make it look like a powerful alternative to Visual Basic!

REALbasic 2009 R3: What about REALBasic 2009! We had known of this tool for sometime, having come across a white paper that we downloaded on the Internet! We downloaded a 30-day evaluation of the REALbasic 2009 R3 from the product website (www.realsoftware.com)! As with Jabaco, installation was a breeze! If we can consider Visual Basic 6.0 to have been a charming wild mountain goat on the highlands of Ethiopia, you may consider REALbasic as beautiful and dainty wild goat variety such as those found on the forests of Cyprus - a beautiful and tasty variety indeed! A powerful viable alternative to Visual Basic .NET/2005! A Visual Basic 6.0 programmer could look at REALbasic code and readily enough read it understandably despite some minor differences in code structure! Both languages (Visual Basic 6 and REALbasic 2009) share many keywords and reserved words in common even though! Even though the IDE is different, it is readily enough understandable! Unlike Jabaco, REALbasic will not allow automatic conversion of Visual Basic 6.0 projects (or perhaps we did not look deeply enough) but rewriting your Visual Basic 6.0 code in REALbasic should definitely not be as difficult as doing a rewrite in Microsoft’s own Visual Basic 2005! Another attraction to REALbasic was that it ships with its own Client/Server SQL Database so that you can be up, building database applications quickly! This would mean that if you are using REALbasic, you would be obtaining a complete applications development studio (everything you need in the package)! And then to boot, REALbasic is multi-platform capable, allowing you to compile directly to Machine code (for windows, MAC OS and several other OS’s) thus achieving significant performance gains similar to those of C/C++ flavors that also compile to machine code! We think that the differences between REALbasic and Visual Basic can be accounted for in the motivation behind the creation of the language…the fact that the creators of REALbasic are in this for real…they are offering a genuine, powerful, viable, non-Microsoft alternative to Visual Basic.

Microsoft Visual Basic 2005: And what about Microsoft’s Visual Basic 2005 (this is what we have installed to enable us start conversion of our programs)? We cannot pretend that we are happy with the fact that we are required to re-write major league enterprise applications almost bottom up! As very experienced Visual Basic developers, we had expected to get up and quickly using the new Visual Basic (but that was not to be)!

Be that as it may, Microsoft’s pioneering efforts in programming language design and innovation cannot be just discounted! The new Visual Basic 2005 is not Visual Basic 6 but it does stand shoulder-to-shoulder with C# (Microsoft’s new toy), J# and Visual C++ in terms of syntax and programming constructs! The New Visual Basic 2005 also includes expanded project types and language capabilities! It also has enhanced language constructs and new data types that will easily put you at par with the C# or C++ programmer while providing tools to rapidly create Web applications and access the latest versions of Microsoft’s own SQL Server 2008 and Oracle 10g/11g.

If it is name recognition that you want (Microsoft is a known name world-wide and their marketing power is unmatched); if you want to be a developer building applications with tools from an ‘approved supplier’ then you will have to embrace the new Visual Basic 2005 (Visual Basic 2008 has already been released as at the time of writing)…learn to eat genetically modified meats with a slightly different taste and feel so that you do not starve to death!

I think it is worth mentioning if you must stick with Microsoft that C#, Microsoft’s new C-like language that Microsoft created specifically for .NET Framework programming can also be a powerful contender! We found that mastering C# was both exciting and fun, probably because I was aware that I was learning a completely new programming language and therefore had no preconceptions of what to expect! On the contrary, learning Visual Basic 2005 was not so much fun perhaps because I approached the language as a Visual Basic programming veteran! I expected the language and keywords to be familiar enough! I expected the program structure to be familiar! I expected programming constructs and abstractions to be familiar! If you are a Visual Basic 6.0 programmer hoping to mater Visual Basic 2005 quickly, be forewarned – simply disabuse your mind! Approach Visual Basic 2005 as if you knew nothing at all about Visual Basic, approach it as if you are learning a completely new language that you have never really used for large-scale commercial projects (like say C/C++)and you will master Visual Basic 2005 soon enough!

Conclusion

All the options I have examined will involve some amount of code re-write! They can be no avoiding that no matter how little and I guess that is the risk attendant to our trade is it not? If you want to keep your VB6 code almost as pure as it is, Jabaco is it! Otherwise, REALbasic is the next best alternative! If you want to stick with Microsoft, you would have no choice but to go Visual Basic 2005 because alas! Microsoft’s massive marketing machine ensures that most companies requesting new software (especially for those of us in the bespoke) software market are all requesting their projects in Visual Studio .NET! Also, it is a reality that the next generation of programmers being trained are being trained in Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET as exemplified by the new popularity of C#

And what about us? We are taking a serious look at Visual Basic 2005, learning to like and desire the new meat so to speak! But we plan to also be delivering cross-platform solutions in Jabaco! Our quest for a solution brought us in touch with great tools out there being built by little known companies…it is worth checking out!