how easy is it to migrate a system written in C to Java or C#?

[SV21]

We have specialist systems that were originally written in clipper and have been very succesfull.

They have recently been migrated to xharbour and are now 32 bit.

They involve much statistical analysis on very large files (Currently .dbf's)

They are multiuser systems.

When xharbour compiles and links these programmes it generates programmes written in C.

We would like to migrate the current system to a more modern language such as Java or C# or even C++.

How easy is it to migrate a system from C to Java or C to C#.

Any comments will be gratefully received.

[chaarmann]

Google for "c to java converter".
But an automated coversion will give you poor code quality, no matter what you use. So I would recomment to rewrite the program instead, if you want to work with the resulting code.

So automated conversion is easy. But if the code contains some tricky methods or execution-time dependencies, then it can become a nightmare to find and fix this error.

[SV21]

I have noticed that trying to read the .c files that "xharbour" generates, and comparing them to the original xharbour code, is very difficult.

Thanks for your comments

Vaughan

[SV21]

Hi One further thought.

It has been suggested that we use an automated conversion initially. We mainly have xharbour generated ".c" (programme)files but these themselves are a product of automated conversion. We also have some "c" objects without the corresponding ".c" files.

I understand that a "c++" compiler will actually compile these "c" files and probably the objects.

Could we then compile this into Java or c# using an automated converter?


We would then re-write a section at a time in the preferred language. As we looked at each section we would probably improve it. Also this would be a process by which we would educate the developer in how the system works so that they could also provide support services in the future.(The developer would have access to the generated "c" code, the original "xharbour" code and the developer who is gradually retiring over the next few years.

The other good thing about this is that it also limits our risk and we can change direction in the early stages of the project if we are not happy.

We will also be looking for some assistance, any suggestions?

Thanks

Vaughan