visual basic migrating to java front end?? help??

[AccessNovice]

TO ALL JAVA PROGRAMMERS,

MY NAME IS MIKE AND HERE IS MY SITUATION. I AM CURRENTLY USING VISUAL BASIC 6 ON THE FRONT END WITH MSDE ON BACK(MSDE IS A MINI SQL SERVER FOUND IN ACCESS2000 PROJECT-IRRELEVANT HERE FOR I NEED YOUR GUIDANCE ON FRONT END). MY COMPANY WOULD LIKE IN A COUPLE MONTHS AN INTERNET FRONT END AND WHATEVER ON BACKEND. ALTHOUGH VISUAL INTERDEV IS MICROSOFT, USES VB SCRIPT,...I WOULD VERY MUCH WANT TO HAVE JAVA. THIS COULD BE MY GATEWAY INTO BEING A JAVA PROGRAMMER ON MY OWN TIME I WILL BE CERTIFIED WITH SUN CORPERATION'S PROGRAMMER CERTIFICATION IN THE LANGUAGE OF JAVA. I AM ALSO LEARNING ABOUT JSP AND JDBC.

WHEN THE TIME COMES, CAN SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE ME IDEAS ON MIGRATING VISUAL BASIC 6(10 FORMS, 6 CONNECTION STRINGS, FEW MODULES) AND THE REPORTING TOOL VSVIEW 7(IT HAS SOME VBSCRIPT CODE, FORMAT IS LIKE ACCESS REPORTS...10 REPORTS) INTO A JAVA FRONT END. HOW HARD IS IT TO MIGRATE VISUAL BASIC INTO JAVA? WHAT WOULD BE SERIOUS ISSUES? IS USING DCOM A FACTOR? WOULD JSP AND JDBC BE THE ONLY IMPORTANT SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGIES? IS THEIR A MERCHANT SELLING A SOFTWARE THAT WOULD HELP WITH THE CONVERSION?

ALSO, CAN ANYONE RECOMMEND A BOOKLIST(MANY GOOD AUTHORS OUT THERE, ALSO MANY NOT SO) FOR ME TO SELF STUDY JAVA SERVER PAGES AND JDBC--I FEEL THE STEP BY STEP BOOKS ARE GREAT--ACTIVE READING IS MY PREFERENCE. ALSO, SHOULD I USE/LEARN 1ST VISUAL J++, OR IS THEIR A BETTER JAVA PLATFORM. ALTHOUGH I AM NOT AN EINSTEIN, I WOULD VERY MUCH APPRECIATE ANY GUIDANCE IN HELPING THIS YOUNG PROGRAMMER THROUGH WHAT YOU WOULD SEE AS A SIMPLE TRANSITION. WOULD ALSO LIKE TO KNOW OF OTHER GOOD JAVA SITES FOR FORUMS, LEARNING, ETC. TO ALL JAVA PROGRAMMERS IN HERE, PLEASE SERIOUSLY CONSIDER DROPPING ANY IDEAS. I AM VERY VERY THANKFUL TO THOSE WONDERFUL PEOPLE OFFERING THIS SOON TO BE JAVA PROGRAMMER A KIND HAND.

Mike

 

[wushutwist]

First thing I would recommend is getting a copy of Jason Hunter's Servlet Programming book. JSP pages are based on Servlets so if you really want to know JSP then you have to know Servlets. Secondly, stay as far away from Visual J++ so you can. VJ++ adds many components that will only work using the Microsoft JVM (there goes portabilty) and after the MS and Sun fallout you can't expect an update to the MS JVM... probably ever. There are many good IDEs for Java, personally I prefer Jbuilder but there is also Visual Cafe, Jrun Studio, IBM Visual Age, Forte, and about a hundred others. Download trials for a few and see which one you like best.

Currently there are no tools that I know of which will make your transition easier. Sun, Oracle, and some else (can't remember) are working on a tool to convert from ASP to JSP but I don't think that is ready yet and I really don't like tools such as that. If you have the time I would recommend going through the A&D for the application again. You may find some things that the previous VB application didn't do well and you probably be made aware of some things that the users wanted that weren't in the VB application. Just my thoughts.
Wushutwist

 

[LeonTang]

Basically I would go for a different approach. I would use jsp, servlet and jdbc together. The system would be something like this; jsp would deal mainly with the contents of the html pages, servlets would be used to retrieve record through jdbc and pass them back to your jsp. So the flow would be something like the user clicks on some button on the jsp. The jsp would call the servlet. The servlet will retrieve records using jdbc from the database. The servlet will call the jsp and the jsp would display the result.

This would be better and easier to maintain. But the choices are yours and you can use servlets instead of jsp too. I doubt there are any tools around to convert VB to Java. You would probably have to recode everything in Java(especially since the 2 programming languages is totally different).

I would suggest reading up on servlets, jsp, jdbc connection and perhaps some basics on html if you are not familiar with since jsp is actually html + java. I don't know of any good books around but there should be plenty in the librarys.

Regards,
Leon

 

[AccessNovice]

I have found a visual basic to java converter...please readvise.

mike