How to: Migrate a project of the DATEC Access SDK

Move an Access application kept with the DATEC Access SDK (msaccess-sdk, project schema 1) to the WKL Office SDK, so it builds with wkl-office from then on.

wkl-office migrate reads the old project file and its source folders and writes a new project into an empty folder; the old project is only read. Then build, export once, and check with roundtrip.

wkl-office migrate C:\Old\Customers\Customers.acproj -o C:\Work\Customers
cd C:\Work\Customers
wkl-office build Customers.acproj
wkl-office export Customers.acproj
wkl-office roundtrip Customers.acproj

1. migrate prints a note for every setting it has no place for; read them.
2. build makes the database from the migrated sources.
3. export writes the sources once as Access writes them: VBA spells every identifier the same way throughout the project, and Access adds form properties such as PublishOption. Commit the result as the start of the history.
4. roundtrip exits with 0 when the sources are stable: their build exports to the same sources. It does not show that the migration kept everything; read the notes of migrate and the warnings of export.

• WKL Forms Object Library 2.0. migrate with -o keeps the reference of the old project, also one to release 1.x (WklComponents). On a PC with release 2.0 registered, build then stops because the type library isn't registered in the version the reference asks for. In that case, first move the new project to release 2.0 in place with wkl-office migrate Customers.acproj (without -o); see `migrate`.
• Empty texts. Text and memo fields allow empty texts after the migration, as the tables of the DATEC build did: tables created with ImportXML accept “” although DAO reports AllowZeroLength False.
• Long binary data and attachments are not migrated: the data files of the DATEC SDK hold none.
• Paths in table data. The DATEC SDK replaces the escapes \t, \n, \r before \\ when it reads its data files, so a value with a backslash path could already be changed in the old sources. Check such values after the migration.

• Command-line reference: migrate
• Project file reference
• How to: Migrate a project of the build tool of WKL Forms Object Library