There is absolutely no good business reason to convert this code at all. If he insists, he's obviously shouldn't have been hired.

How about "What is a VMS Logical Name and when do you use them?" If they don't know the answer, then they can't possibly understand VMS. Another good question -- if you were asked to develop a VB application that could talk to an OpenVMS back end, how would you do it? There's a few different ways to do it (sockets, Telnet, or Serial Communications) are the three primary ways they should think about it. Walt

Ringworld -- Larry Niven