Migrating 1M+ Lines of Code from PowerBuilder to .NET C#

Summary

A US-based management software development company needed to move its business-critical application off the outdated PowerBuilder language. With a shortage of PowerBuilder resources and unacceptably high maintenance costs, the Client chose an automated migration approach as the less risky option. INNERLUXES converted the application — roughly 1,125,000 lines of code — to C# .NET on schedule, delivering a scalable, tested app with identical functionality.

About the Client

The Client is a management software development company based in the USA.

The Challenge

The Client's software code was written in the out-of-date PowerBuilder language. The company faced a shortage of available PowerBuilder resources for maintaining and expanding the existing application, which was crucial for the company's daily operations. Unacceptably high maintenance costs were an additional incentive to consider migration to a modern platform. The Client decided to proceed with an automated application migration approach, as it was considered the less risky option.

The Solution

INNERLUXES was selected as the service provider to carry out this migration project. Migration experts converted the source PowerBuilder application into C# .NET. The application was large — approximately 1,125,000 lines of code — so it was very important to finish all project phases on schedule to prevent unexpected system downtime.

As a result, the team completed the work on time and the Client received a scalable, tested application with the same functionality. During the project, the development team encountered some serious technical problems due to architectural differences between the source and target applications; all of the issues were successfully resolved with INNERLUXES's automated migration approach.

The Results

• The Client successfully deployed the converted .NET C# application with no damage to the system's performance and productivity.

Technologies and Tools

PowerBuilder, Sybase, Microsoft .NET C#, MS SQL Server 2005, T-SQL.