Question:
I’ve wanted to upgrade my VB4 pro to VB5 ent. for a month or so now, but after monitoring various VB newsgroups for a few weeks I’m glad I waited with the upgrade.It seems like VB5 is not at all compatible with VB4 in any way (including OCX’s).VB5 is really not very popular amongst VB4 developers…I myself have several VB4 16 bit programs that my customers really need me to make future chages/upgrades to, so can I 100% safely upgrade to VB5 and still use my VB4 16 bit version ?What about Crystal Reports, is the VB5 version of CR compatible with the VB4 version of CR ?What about the Setup Wizard in VB5 and VB4 16 bit, will there be any conflicts there ?
Answer:
The problems you have been reading about are mainly coming from VisualBasic 4.0 and 5.0’s libraries not being compatible. For best results, Iwould recommend uninstalling Visual Basic 4.0 before installing VisualBasic 5.0. In addition, Visual Basic 5.0 and Office 95 do not get alongvery well. I had major problems when trying to have them live together.Office 97 and Visual Basic 5.0 get along very well, however.
As far as OCXs not being compatible, I’m not sure where you heard that.OCXs that worked in VB4 will work fine in VB5, since there was no change inthe OCX model between the versions.
Visual Basic 5.0 does not include any support for 16-bit applicationcreation, so your 16-bit applications will either have to be upgraded to32-bit or you’d better stay with VB4.=20
As far as Crystal Reports goes, VB5 includes Crystal Reports 4.5. Thecurrent shipping version (which you can upgrade to) of CR is 5.0.
The Setup Wizard in VB5 has been updated to deal with VB 5.0 files. VB 5.0will automatically upgrade any VB4 files to work with VB5, but it will notcreate any 16-bit applications any longer.
