Whether you’re modernizing your legacy application, adding new features, or migrating to a new platform, .NET offers a compelling route forward. It’s more than just keeping up with tech trends—it’s a strategic move toward greater scalability, maintainability, and future-readiness, not to mention cost savings. And Synergex offers a straightforward path to .NET that enables you to move forward at your own pace.

Why we love .NET

.NET is a versatile software development platform from Microsoft, supporting multiple programming languages and tools, making it a popular choice for application developers.

.NET offers

• Long-term support and ecosystem stability
• Platform-agnostic flexibility
• Enhanced developer productivity
• Performance and modernization
• Built-in security and governance
• Data access and interoperability

Its widespread adoption and familiar tooling also make it easier to recruit, onboard, and retain top development talent.

Start small and expand

If you’re on a platform that supports .NET—or once you migrate to one—you can adopt .NET incrementally, using a hybrid architecture where traditional and .NET components coexist.

If you’re migrating your application from OpenVMS or Unix, .NET can be part of your migration strategy. You can plan to run some or all of your code under .NET on the target system and replace/enhance OpenVMS-specific functionality with .NET components. We recommend a “lift and shift” approach: prepare the code you plan to convert to .NET before moving to the new platform so it will run under .NET when you get there.

For terminal-based applications, Synergy .NET supports running on Linux or Windows with minimal UI changes, especially if you’ve been using the windowing API or UI Toolkit in a cell-based environment. On Linux, terminal emulators can run applications with both traditional and .NET components, and on Windows, full .NET applications are supported.

The transition process

Converting traditional Synergy code to Synergy .NET opens the door to modern tooling and integration with the entire .NET ecosystem. Here’s how to do it:

1. Determine what .NET platform(s) you want to develop and deploy on.

2. Decide the scope of your .NET project.

Consider which parts of your application you want to move to .NET and where you want to start.

3. Assess your application.

• Compile with -qnet to locate incompatible code. The -qnet option turns on .NET compiler warnings for items that are not supported in Synergy .NET (for example, deprecated data types, syntax, APIs, compiler options, and alignment warnings).  
• Evaluate the use of these unsupported features to determine which components can be migrated directly and which may need redesigning.

4. Refactor code for .NET compatibility.

• Break down large routines into smaller, testable pieces.
• Replace unsupported features identified in the previous step.
• If your scope includes replacing your UI, modularize your business logic and separate it from your UI. (This helps isolate the code that can move directly into .NET class libraries.)

You can find more detailed information in our documentation: Preparing Existing Code for Synergy .NET.

5. Set up your Synergy .NET development environment.

• Install the latest supported version of .NET (currently .NET 8), Visual Studio, and Synergy DBL Integration for Visual Studio (SDI).
• Create a new Synergy .NET project.

6. Migrate code to Synergy .NET.

• Move your library code (ELBs and OLBs) into .NET class libraries.
• Move your mainline code into .NET multiple mainlines.
• Use the Synergy .NET compiler to build and debug.

7. Test (and test some more).

• (optional but highly recommended) Create unit tests to validate that your ported logic works correctly.
• Create integration tests to ensure that data access, business rules, and external systems behave as expected.

8. Deploy and iterate.

• (optional but highly recommended) Build installers or deployment packages using .NET tools.
• Train teams and document differences between the old and new environments.
• Continue migrating gradually if you didn’t port everything initially.

To learn more about how Synergy .NET can help you modernize your applications, contact Synergex today.

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