Migrating Old Uniface Applications that are based on Uniface 7 & Uniface 8.4

Hi everyone,

My name is Yaki and I'm new here.

I am working with a customer who is contemplating what to do with a couple of old Uniface applications that are still based on Uniface 7 & Uniface 8.4, as  these applications are based on an unsupported infrastructure and need to be modernized.

I would appreciate feedback on:

1. The Migration path involved  from Uniface 7 & 8.4 to the current Uniface 10.4
2. The complexity and sticking points of such a migration
3. Is there still support for migrating from such old Uniface versions? 
4. Feedback on your experience with Uniface migration services and its effectiveness, success  and cost-performance in such a migration scenario.  
5. When conducting such a migration and modernization, are there any recommended products that need to be purchased that are not included in the Uniface 10.4 licenses?
6. Feedback on migration services/tools that can facilitate an efficient migration of such applications  to non-Uniface environments
7. Pointers to any useful references/past discussions.

I'm hoping your experience and knowledge can help my customer make informed decisions. 

Thank you,

Yaki.

Hi Yaki

You have a lot of work ahead of you. Or maybe not :-)

Migration from 7/8 to 9 is not the big deal
Create a new environment with Uniface 9.
Export the whole model to XML
Import the XMl to UnifAce 9
Compile all "things" and check for errors. You can ignore warnings about "depricated"  :-)
Take a coffe pause and thing about the errors:"Can I  solve them global or have I to change the proccode in every component?"
If you have a "stable" UnifAce 9 version, do the same for migration from Uniface 9 to 10

We are working with Uniface from late Uniface 6 to now UnifAce 10.
90% of the code runs without any problems.
9% have to change "mechanical" (may be a "search&replace" component?)
And for 1% you have to thing: "Holy s..t, how to solve this" :-)

Just try it out; and if there are "challenges"  ask the forum

BTW 
Topic 5 : UnifAce do have all you need. But this depends on what you except :-)
                   There is no tool in UnifAceor outside of Uniface to create a "moderen"  appöication
                    It's up to you to thing about what is moderen and how ti reach the goal
                    But first, try to migrate to Uniface 10, maybe you find a few new "components"/"things" thet can help you to reach the goal
Topic 6 : No there is no tools to migrate from Uniface to another program languages.
                    Just thing about the access to the database. How to tell a migration tool to handle this :)

Ingo

Ingo, thank you so much for your elaborate answer. It is very helpful.

I understand from you that Uniface 7 apps can be migrated directly to Uniface 9.

Hi Yaki

Good question about 7 => 9 :-)
We did it step by step, but I could work directly as the dictionary hasn't changed that much from 7 => 8 

Ingo

Hi everyone,

My name is Yaki and I'm new here.

I am working with a customer who is contemplating what to do with a couple of old Uniface applications that are still based on Uniface 7 & Uniface 8.4, as  these applications are based on an unsupported infrastructure and need to be modernized.

I would appreciate feedback on:

1. The Migration path involved  from Uniface 7 & 8.4 to the current Uniface 10.4
2. The complexity and sticking points of such a migration
3. Is there still support for migrating from such old Uniface versions? 
4. Feedback on your experience with Uniface migration services and its effectiveness, success  and cost-performance in such a migration scenario.  
5. When conducting such a migration and modernization, are there any recommended products that need to be purchased that are not included in the Uniface 10.4 licenses?
6. Feedback on migration services/tools that can facilitate an efficient migration of such applications  to non-Uniface environments
7. Pointers to any useful references/past discussions.

I'm hoping your experience and knowledge can help my customer make informed decisions. 

Thank you,

Yaki.

Hi everyone,

My name is Yaki and I'm new here.

I am working with a customer who is contemplating what to do with a couple of old Uniface applications that are still based on Uniface 7 & Uniface 8.4, as  these applications are based on an unsupported infrastructure and need to be modernized.

I would appreciate feedback on:

1. The Migration path involved  from Uniface 7 & 8.4 to the current Uniface 10.4
2. The complexity and sticking points of such a migration
3. Is there still support for migrating from such old Uniface versions? 
4. Feedback on your experience with Uniface migration services and its effectiveness, success  and cost-performance in such a migration scenario.  
5. When conducting such a migration and modernization, are there any recommended products that need to be purchased that are not included in the Uniface 10.4 licenses?
6. Feedback on migration services/tools that can facilitate an efficient migration of such applications  to non-Uniface environments
7. Pointers to any useful references/past discussions.

I'm hoping your experience and knowledge can help my customer make informed decisions. 

Thank you,

Yaki.

Hi

An important point is to be able to compile the code in v7/v8... just to compare with v9/v10. If not, you could waste a lot of time trying to fix errors that already existed in original code 20 years ago.

A thing I do with this kind of challenges is to split message log in individual files (only for components). I built a simple program that splits compilation messages into individual files. After this, I commit all of them into a GIT or similar. This way I can easily compare compilations of the different Uniface versions.

Pay attention on UTF8, version 7  comes from many years ago

Most in this forum has successfully migrated from version 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10

On step after another  :-) 

Hi Yaki

I posted to this forum a few years ago on this topic... 

I completed successfully and easily a conversion from v7 to v10... 

All the data is there in the xml files of v7.... You just need to slot it into an xml format for v10.

Formpic was also not an obstacle.

Notepad++ and regex are your friends for this job ;-)

Hi Yaki

Good question about 7 => 9 :-)
We did it step by step, but I could work directly as the dictionary hasn't changed that much from 7 => 8 

Ingo

Hi

An important point is to be able to compile the code in v7/v8... just to compare with v9/v10. If not, you could waste a lot of time trying to fix errors that already existed in original code 20 years ago.

A thing I do with this kind of challenges is to split message log in individual files (only for components). I built a simple program that splits compilation messages into individual files. After this, I commit all of them into a GIT or similar. This way I can easily compare compilations of the different Uniface versions.

Pay attention on UTF8, version 7  comes from many years ago

Most in this forum has successfully migrated from version 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10

On step after another  :-) 

Hi Yaki,

I recommend reading the Uniface Migration Guides:

• https://docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle/Uniface_MigrationGuide_V104/resource/Uniface_MigrationGuide_V104.pdf
• https://docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle/Uniface_MigrationGuide_V97/resource/Uniface_MigrationGuide_V97.pdf
• If you have a Uniface Eight installation you should be able to find the migration guide document in an installation subfolder (mgg.pdf if I remember correctly).

In my personal experience, migrating from Uniface 7 to 8 requires the most work, and from 9 to 10 the least.

You may also need to regenerate database stored procedures in Uniface 10. If you're changing platform as well that would also require additional work to address any dependencies.

We built an e-learning path for "What's New in Uniface 10" which is free to use, and includes a "Migrating to Uniface 10" module that gives you some guided practice migrating a small supplied Uniface 9 application to Uniface 10. Your account manager can put you in touch with Uniface services people if you need assistance outside of this forum.

Kind Regards,

------------------------------
David Akerman
Principal Solution & Enablement Architect
Rocket Internal - All Brands
------------------------------

Hi Osman,

Thank you so much for your tips and suggestions!

To clarify - did you migrate from Uniface 7 directly to Uniface 10, or was it in phase/s with Uniface 8/9?

I will try to look up your old posts on this topic .

Yaki.