Migration from Clarion 6.3 to C10

Hi Folks,

We’re looking at the correct way to migrate enormous and complicated application from Clarion 6.3 to Clarion 10.

Since I don’t have reach experience in Clarion development at the moment, I would like to ask your help with some quick questions based on your experience.

  • Is there any guideline about such kind of migration? I wasn’t able to find anything like this.
  • How complex this migration could be (from technical and time-consuming sides)?
  • Does the complexity of migration depend on the size of project?
  • What are the typical tricks and issues for this migration?
  • What should we pay attention to?

Your help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Swindy

1 Like

Hi Swindy,

11 month before today I had the question to end my carreer with C6.2 in the next three years or to go on with C10. I make the way with C10. This way was not easy but after 4 month of learning the secrets of C10 I would say it was worth the work. At the end of April 2016 I was through (without testing), I started at mid of december 2015.

For me the best way was an recursive process. In short:

At the beginning you should update your current C6.x environment to the latest state (means 3th-Party templates):
Make a complete copy or your running C6.x folder with all the used templates, libs, classes etc.
Make a complete copy of your app (or apps) folders. Best is to start with the simplest app (or multi app).
Update or upgrade the cloned environment to the newest version of your 3th party templates and bring the copy of your app up to a state that is running stable. To avoid fatal destruction of any productive version using a virtualbox guest was a good idea for me.

Now set up the C10 environment:
Use the same 3th party templates and classes.

Recursive: Register your own templates to C10. You will see errors. Edit your templates in your clone C6.x until they will work in C6.x and in C10. The differences are not so big. When I compared the SV C6.2 templates with the C10 templates I was astonished that there are not much differences.

Recursive: Import the C6.x dictionary. You will see errors. Edit your C6.x dictionary and retry. It will not be so hard since you will get the “feeling” of the kind of errors after some sessions.

Now you have your dictionary ready to work with C10.
Recursive: Export your C6.x app to text and import it to C10. You will see errors. Edit your C6.x apps (and also your .CLW classes and libs) until you get no errors.

Now you have all your apps in C10. You have to make a complete test since there are some differences in the runtimes of C6.x and C10. The DEBUG mode is usefull to detect any bugs from the ASSERT compiler directives.

At the end you should have two nearly identic app systems in C6.x and in C10 (and the third one that is your original version to cheack against the new C6.x/C10 version). The charm is to compare the C6.x version with the C10 version if you get errors in the C10.

Of course this sounds easier than it is - but for me it works. After that a new world of possibilities will be open for your apps.

The migrated app system has about 90 tables (ORACLE SQL) and 12 exe-apps that make use of 12 or more dll apps. There are three Thin@ apps that runs remote with a small client as good as on local desktops.

The app system himself is used as an ERP in the agro chemical world to manage unclassified (new) formulations (planning, production, warehousing, dispatch) since 2002 with great success (as my customers say).

I make use of Capesoft Templates (NetTalk and others), AbcFree, DynaDrv, InMemory, EasyExcel, ImageEx, Thin@, LsZip. I work with C10 Enterprise (Clarion since 1994).

Hope this helps.

2 Likes

In addition to what @bernd_lu has said, there are also a few topics in the Clarion help file that might be (mildly) useful.

  • Converting Applications from Clarion 6
  • Resolving Application Conversion Issues
  • Converting Topspeed Project Files to MSBuild projects

There is also the “What’s new in this Version?” section at the bottom of the online help contents list. Screenshot over here

Didn’t ClarionMag have an article on this subject too? I cannot locate anything at the moment though.

Please do report back your results @Swindy and hopefully others who have been down the path can also chime in with helpful hints!