I have been asked many times by various clients, students, and the IT curious about PowerBuilder: When did Sybase develop the product and how did it evolve? I keep telling this story and answering e-mails on the subject. I am now to the point where I have decided that I should have PBD...

Sybase has just released the latest version of its premier .NET development tool in PowerBuilder version 11.2. I am proud to say that I haven't missed a beta since November 1989 (version 0.8) and that includes PocketBuilder and InfoMaker too. I need to thank the people at Sybase for co...

I just wanted to acknowledge the tremendous increase in the amount of Blog activity that I have received over the past year. I think (and hope) that this is because many Sybase professionals out there have come to visit my site for latest information on the Sybase scene. Since I starte...

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 complic...

In the first article we presented a some theories about the ClassDefinition object and were able to show the libraries of a PB application in a treeview control. This month we'll read the objects from the libraries and inspect their content. When a user expands an entry in the treeview...

We begin this article by asking the question: Why would you want to integrate real-time GPS data into your PowerBuilder applications anyway? After all, it's not likely you are going to connect a GPS receiver to your desktop computer and ask yourself where you are currently located. (At...

PowerBuilder contains a number of built-in common dialogs that can be used within your own applications. What do you do when one of these dialogs meets most, but not quite all, of the functionality you need? Do you simply accept the limited functionality? Do you write your own dialog f...

As a PowerBuilder developer I'm sure you have already used SQL Anywhere a few times, but did you know that SQL Anywhere owns over 70% of the mobile database market? This is because it's easy to use, easy to administer, and doesn't take up too much space.

An enterprise portal is the converged 'hub' of multiple, complementary information management solutions, including document and content management, information search and retrieval, knowledge management, team collaboration, workflow, and business intelligence.

POWERBUILDER PB2XLS 1.2 7/07 – Desta announced the release of PB2XLS 1.2. PB2XLS is a component for PowerBuilder applications that allows the developer to create Excel files, write information into cells and worksheets, and format cells and worksheets. www.desta.com.ua/pb2xls/

Sybase announced the general availability of Pocket PowerBuilder, the new integrated application development environment designed to simplify and speed the creation of mobile and wireless enterprise applications.

It's an aesthetic thing. When you click on a grid DataWindow label and change an attribute, it acquires what are formally termed UGBs - Ugly Grid Borders.

Sybase announced second quarter 2003 total revenues of $192.0 million, including license fees of $63.9 million, exceeding First Call consensus revenue estimates of $186.5 million.

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I'd give you some of the 'tricks and treats' that I've collected over the years for PowerBuilder, InfoMaker, and Sybase ASE.

In early versions of PowerBuilder, development primarily consisted of three types: composing graphic objects by adding visual controls; coding functions and events using PowerBuilder's native language, PowerScript; and creating DataWindow objects.

Sybase announced it has entered into a long-term strategic partnership with Appeon Corporation to deliver a revolutionary solution to generate rich Web applications from PowerBuilder client/server applications.

In this article I'll show you how to play MP3 files with your own 'sound machine' written in PowerBuilder. But before we start to implement it, you should first understand what MP3 is.

Myth: 'Creating reports with InfoMaker is easy,' a partially accurate statement, on the surface. Reality: Let's change that to: 'Formatting your report with the InfoMaker tool is easy, once you've figured out the data to be reported.'

When I started using distributed DataWindows, the slow performance frightened me, usually when the middle server and the client were in separate computers. At that time I was using a PIII 500 desktop computer, and a PIII 800 database server over a 10MB network. Although it's not the to...

Sybase announced the availability of EAServer 4.2, an open application server that has been selected by a growing number of state and regional governments for its uncompromising performance and support for secure Web services within an 'open-choice' development and deployment environme...

'The tag property takes a string value.' That's what PB Help tells us about the tag property. Not much considering all or at least most PB objects have a 'tag' property. What's its mission in life? Anything we want it to be.

The DropDownDataWindow (DDDW) edit style is one of PowerBuilder's outstanding features. Yes, I know there are a lot of new and exciting capabilities in the upcoming release of PowerBuilder, but in this article I'll try to solve some of the current problems with the existing features th...

My son is only 18-months old but I have taken more pictures of him than I can count. Thanks to digital cameras it's so easy to take and store pictures. Since I spend most of my time on the computer, I formed the habit of changing the Windows desktop with his latest portrait both at wor...

Now that the holidays are over, it's back to work, back to school...and back to the basics. In my December column, 'PowerBuilder and ODBC 101' (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 12), we discussed hooking up to a database via ODBC.

The plane has leveled off at 39,000 feet and I'm on my way home after spending two weeks in Europe. It's been an interesting trip - traveling to the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and Russia.

Interfaces are one of the most important concepts that have found their way into modern software engineering in the past couple of years. Java, COM, CORBA, C# - all those languages/concepts support interfaces. PowerBuilder does not. This article shows you how to sneak the interface con...

PowerBuilder 9 will make the creation and consumption of Web services easier; however, we don't have to wait for its release to take advantage of these features.

If you're using PowerBuilder 6 or 7 for new development, you should really be using PB 8. It's the fastest way to build a new client/server application or move PowerBuilder business logic to a distributed n-tier environment.

When moving applications to the Web, one of the challenges facing developers is how to migrate rich client features to a browser environment. Two features that can give your Web applications a boost in both appearance and functionality are popup calendars and lookup (search) windows.

New to PowerBuilder 8.0 is the ability to deploy your DataWindows to a Web server as self-contained components. These new components are called Web DataWindow Containers. These containers will convert your collection of DataWindows into HTML with the aid of your Component Transaction M...

If asked to name tasks that get in the way of the creativity and enjoyment of application development, developers of any language would produce a similar shortlist. Testing, documentation, source control management, and tracking project time are but a few. PowerBuilder developers have ...

Once upon a time there was a source code editor called 'Brief.' Okay, so it was DOS-based and had an ugly interface. However, it had one feature I truly loved, a 'code snippet' manager. You could have your favorite block of code inserted into your source with a few keystrokes. Eventual...

It would be better to live in a world of best-case scenarios, where all parts of the enterprise puzzle are provided by the same vendor. But that's the exception rather than the rule. It's often the case in the modern enterprise that companies will standardize on technologies from a wi...

Novalys announced the release of Visual Expert for PowerBuilder. Visual Expert helps developers work on any PowerBuilder application, even ones they're not familiar with. After it has analyzed the application, Visual Expert provides graphic views, inheritance diagrams, impact analyses,...

As of Sybase's EAServer 4.0, OEM developers and IT organizations can take advantage of two new installation features that allow them to create and deploy applications with an embedded installation of EAServer. EAServer 4.0 includes features that improve the ability of OEM vendors...

Sybase announced the general availability of EAServer 4.0. EAS 4.0 provides support for J2EE 1.3, EJB 2.0, updated connectors, an exposed JMS API, Web server plug-ins, unified install, and added JDMK API. It also now handles JSP and servlet requests directly from the user's Web server....

PowerBuilder has been around for 10 years, and has grown exponentially in that time. Now, in 2001, PowerBuilder has matured to a new level - version 8 There were a lot of 'firsts' with PowerBuilder, and now it has become the unquestioned development productivity tool for the enterpris...

My last article (PBDJ, Vol. 8, issue 6), which introduced PowerBuilder 8 and Web targets, demonstrated how to create Web pages from within the PB development environment. This article reviews the 4GL Web server-side event model and discusses how it helps reduce development time...

Sybase announced that it has completed its acquisition of New Era of Networks, Inc., an e-business enabler based in Englewood, Colorado. New Era of Networks stockholders approved the conversion of the company's remaining outstanding shares of common stock into the right to receive 0.38...

I realize that many people are talking about nothing but Java, and yes, I'm writing Java components myself; however, PowerBuilder still lives on. There are many existing PowerBuilder client/server applications in production that need to be maintained and many that need to be move...