Macrosoft’s 3 New Smart Automation Tools for VFP Conversions

By Dr. Ronald Mueller | Published on August 8th, 2017 | Last updated on September 30th, 2024 |

Automating the Conversion Process

If you are worried about your company’s future still relying on Visual FoxPro(VFP) application, then you are at the right place to make the leap to a more modern system. Macrosoft has a proven track record of successfully guiding companies through VFP conversion projects. In all our conversion projects, we have always thought of possible ways of automating some parts of the VFP conversion process without compromising the quality of the final new system. Our modest automation efforts have resulted in developing three new automation tools that have begun to play useful role in conversion projects. We are pleased to announce that our three new smart automation tools will make it possible to reduce time and cost dramatically.

The 3 automation tools developed by Macrosoft are described as follows:

1. SpecGenerator: SpecGenerator is a system analysis document generator that creates human readable spec documents by reading VFP forms, programs and classes code. It generates codes considered to be analogous to pseudocode that helps developers to read and understand business rules in the VFP application. Developers can understand the design of forms and visual classes with the help of all the business rules, validations and DBF information along with screen shot provided by SpecGenerator. Analysis portion will reduce the overall project conversion cost by nearly 18%.

2. vDBF Converter: vDBF Converter migrates VFP database structure with all associated indexes and constrain into a Microsoft SQL database. It also generates a primary identity key with the right automatic key generator constrains. vDBF converter automatically reads relationships from the VFP table and populates the identity key information to make the new MS SQL data possess relational integrity. Conversion effort will reduce the total resource effort by about 5%.

3. Dazzle Framework: Dazzle is a custom-built .NET ready-to-start development framework (RSD). It reduces time, avoids refactoring, generates a single coding standard, and provides for reusability of the code. This allows developers focus on specific business rules embodied in VFP application while allowing them to validate their code writing. Development efforts will be reduced by around 7% overall.

When compared with the manual effort, these three smart automation tools, taken together, will reduce the overall effort estimates and timelines by about 30%.

Even with these tools it is definitely not going to be an easy conversion of your application to a new platform.

Macrosoft has built these automation tools based on the following 2 criteria’s:

• Impact – Estimate how much impact the automation tools would make to reduce the overall project effort.
• Technology Feasibility – Ensure that these automation tools do not degrade any aspect of the final target system.

These automation systems are not available in the market, but something Macrosoft uses exclusively with our migration clients. Our intention is to continue developing these automation tools so they play an ever-increasing role in the future conversions. We are confident that these tools will make a huge positive impact in reducing the overall effort estimates and timelines.

Dr. Ronald Mueller

Founder & Chairman at Macrosoft Inc

Ron is Chairman and Founder of Macrosoft, Inc. Ron heads up all company strategic activities and directs day-to-day work of the Leadership Team at Macrosoft. Ron is also Macrosoft’s Chief Scientist, defining and structuring Macrosoft’s path forward on new technologies and products, such as Cloud; Big Data; and AI. Ron has a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from New York University, and worked in physics for over a decade at Yale University, The Fusion Energy Institute in Princeton, NJ, and at Argonne National Laboratory. Ron also worked at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ., where he managed a group on Big Data, including very early work on neural networks. Ron has a career-long passion for ultra-large-scale data processing and analysis including predictive analytics; data mining, machine learning, and neural networks.