People always like the shiny and new, regardless of whether it's gadgets, clothes, cars, or technology. It's exciting to get something new; we feel good about ourselves, like we're a part of an elite group, ahead of the curve, "in the know." Yet "buyer's remorse" is also a well-known phenomenon because many purchases end up being not quite what we expected. That new gadget may have one or two slick features, but some core functionality is missing or clunky to use, functionality that worked really well in your old device. And, while the slick new features may be fun and have a certain cache, the real value is in the product's core functionality..

Hype about new software products is no different. Analysts and press typically don't want to talk about something solid, dependable, and old. Technology is always moving forward and they're paid to remain at the forefront of what's next and how it adds value. There's not a lot of press given to something that's been around, and is still around, doing its job day in and day out. The old Maytag commercials come to mind, the ones with the Maytag repairman having nothing to do because the products were so dependable they never broke down. For decades, Maytag's reliability and solid performance were key factors in the decision to buy one of its machines. It was a solid investment, a proven technology. New brands came and went, yet Maytag remained. Just because certain products or technology aren't necessarily new to the market doesn't mean they can't be considered exciting. After all, what is more exciting than finding a solution that quickly and easily solves your business problems and saves money, improving your bottom line? Getting a great deal on an iPhone or that new designer handbag can be a rush; the same exhilaration is felt when you realize that simply updating a five-year-old+ application to a new version of PowerBuilder can quickly solve business needs and technology challenges.

Old doesn't always mean outdated or no longer valuable, and legacy has a positive as well as a negative connotation. We talk of the legacy of ancient philosophers, of sports legacies (many of which are naturally from Boston!) and a leader's political legacy. In general, these are usually powerful and positive references. PowerBuilder has a legacy - a history of success. When referring to technology that's not new but has been in successful use for more than a few years, the term legacy should be replaced by the words proven technology.

PowerBuilder is proven technology. It's stood the test of time, and thousands upon thousands of mission-critical applications have been running businesses in every industry imaginable for nearly two decades. In the mid-1990s, many organizations bought into Java's "build-once-deploy-anywhere" hype. They attempted to rewrite applications that were working just fine simply so they would exist in this new wonder language. Most PowerBuilder-to-Java rewrite projects failed for several reasons. Java is a 3GL, is considered more difficult to learn than PowerBuilder and far more time-consuming. And, it's not as platform-independent as people believe. And yet, there are still PowerBuilder shops who today are attempting a rewrite in Java.

Even more baffling is that some folks talk about rewriting PowerBuilder applications in .NET. PowerBuilder is .NET. The .NET Framework is an evolution of Windows, Microsoft's platform that's tightly integrated with the operating system. As a development tool built for the Windows platform, PowerBuilder will continue to evolve to support .NET and future evolutions of the Microsoft platform. PowerBuilder 11.0 and later supports .NET with increasing levels of functionality. And, PowerBuilder does something that Microsoft doesn't do - provides a migration path for your existing applications.

Migrating an application from one version of PowerBuilder to another has always been a fairly straightforward process. The PowerBuilder team has striven to ensure backward compatibility and simplify migration so developers can easily update a very old application, several versions behind, to the current version. But, moving to .NET is more than a simple version migration. .NET is a services-based framework that simplifies development, but requires that you code in a .NET language and access these classes to delivery functionality differently than your applications now behave.

Visual Basic developers have had to rewrite applications in a new .NET language. PowerBuilder users simply continue using PowerBuilder, writing the same code and deploying applications as usual, letting PowerBuilder do the heavy lifting and translate to .NET for them.

Beginning with PowerBuilder 11, developers can deploy a Win32 application as a .NET WinForm, WebForm, or Smart Client application. This delivers the benefit of a managed code application without incurring the enormous cost and investment in time to learn and rewrite in a .NET language. Sound too good to be true?

Some PowerBuilder applications  easier to translate to .NET than others; applications that are well partitioned and cleanly separate business logic from UI have the most seamless redeployment as .NET applications. Not all PowerBuilder apps were written with best practices and object-oriented principles in mind, and these applications will require some refactoring. This refactoring is a smart investment, and is par for the course. Tweaking an application and rewriting some core sections will extend the life of your PowerBuilder application, and can make you an instant hero, especially in this economy.

As managers and IT decision makers commit to delivering SOA solutions, richer Web 2.0 experiences, .NET applications, and consider how to redeploy to the Cloud, they don't always understand what they're committing to and how this will affect their existing investments. With PowerBuilder, your investment is safe. PowerBuilder applications can be easily extended to support these technologies. Business logic can be exposed as Web Services, and refactoring in PowerBuilder is fast and easy, far easier than rewriting in a new language.

And that's probably the most important point of all; there's no need for a complete rewrite. Some people question the value of refactoring in PowerBuilder and opt for a full rewrite instead, but let's consider what a rewrite gets you:

• Significant cost
• Training to learn a new language
• Time to rewrite an application
• Time
• Rewrites often take longer than anticipated. Most often, it's about three years and then they're often not complete.
• An end product that, at best, is as good as the application you set out to replace several years earlier

And yet technology has moved forward during your rewrite and now newer and shinier things are on the market. Did the rewrite future-proof your application, or is it lacking all the new functionality of these new products? Isn't what you're left with really just the same application that you started out with several years ago, albeit in a different language? Does the technology used really matter if the application solves the business problem at hand, and is extensible into the future?

That's the beauty of PowerBuilder. It's built to evolve. It became the most prominent application development tool in the mid-90s precisely because it made your job easier. Sybase keeps PowerBuilder current by incorporating and abstracting new and emerging technologies so that they're easy to use. Your focus remains on getting the job done, not which technologies you're using. Because at the end of the day solving the problem at hand in the quickest, most cost-effective way possible is what matters. And technology will always move ahead. Whatever technology you pick today, something newer and shinier is around the corner. It's like driving a new car off the lot; its value depreciates most significantly in those first two years. But with PowerBuilder, your investment is safe.

So when people say that PowerBuilder is legacy software, I agree by restating that PowerBuilder has a legacy of success in a market that spans almost two decades, and that's because it's proven technology. Legacy rocks.