The time problem that methodology alone doesn’t solve

The methodology is sound.

Preserve the business logic. Rehost it in .NET. Replace the presentation layer. Run both systems in parallel until every output matches.

Every serious PowerBuilder modernization practitioner knows this is the right approach.

The problem isn’t the methodology. The problem is the time.

Discovery alone — cataloguing every DataWindow, tracing every dependency, mapping every computed column — can take months on a complex application. Not because it’s intellectually difficult. Because it’s manual, exhaustive, and unforgiving. Miss one object, misread one expression, and you find out in production.

Then comes the conversion: window by window, business logic by business logic, API endpoint by API endpoint.

The methodology doesn’t compress. It requires what it requires.

Until AI changes the equation.