Articles by Brad Wery

PBDJ Feature: Take Control of Your GUI

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:00:00 EST

One of the biggest complaints I hear about PowerBuilder is how the applications developed with it end up looking old and outdated. PowerBuilder allows developers to create complicated, robust, and efficient business applications. What it doesn't do is offer an effective presentation. Sometimes lackluster presentation can hurt an application's marketability. Unfortunate as it is, the look of the application is what gives users their first impression. An old-looking application just won't impress.

Dynamic SQL with Sybase's Open Client

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:45:00 EDT

PowerBuilder offers some dynamic querying capabilities. For simple scenarios it works quite well. But what if your scenario isn't simple? What if you wanted to write a database-querying tool that provides stored procedure compilation, ShowPlan display, or the execution of large complicated batch scripts?

Dockable Windows in PowerBuilder

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:00:00 EST

If you've read any of my past articles, you know that I love a good challenge, a challenge that really gets me thinking and ultimately ends up teaching me something. One thing I always wanted to do was create dockable windows using pure PowerScript. I held off from doing this for some time because of the almost overwhelming complexity that was inherent with this type of control. Seeing as this would be the perfect test of my skills, I motivated myself to do it.

Office 2003 Toolbar A New Look For Your Old PowerBuilder App

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 14:30:00 EDT

There's a reason why software developers like Microsoft update the look of their applications every two years. It shows the consumer that something has changed and therefore they need to upgrade, at least that's my opinion.

A PowerBuilder Challenge

Mon, 09 May 2005 12:00:00 EDT

PowerBuilder contains so many features and capabilities that it's hard to fully understand and learn all of them when you're caught up in the 'daily grind.' A good way to deal with this is to create a skill-developing challenge. In most cases, I try to do something that I figure can't be done in PowerBuilder.