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Trends in the industry affect PowerBuilder developers. In a similar manner, it would be short-sighted to think that PowerBuilder developers don't need to keep abreast of the direction the software development industry is moving in. As a result, we've run a number of articles recently that talk about the software development industry in more relative terms.

Sybase makes products that are companion products to PowerBuilder. We've been covering PowerDesigner at least since Powersoft acquired S-Designor and rebranded the product. That was before it started shipping with PowerBuilder 6.5 (it no longer does), and long before it was made a plug-in to the IDE in PowerBuilder 10.0 (http://pbdj.sys-con.com/read/42142.htm). We've also provided a great deal of coverage for other companion products like EAServer and SQL Anywhere (at times also called ASA).

Sybase makes products that are based on PowerBuilder technology. Such products allow PowerBuilder developers to leverage their PowerBuilder-based skills when developing with other languages or for other platforms. To that degree, we now offer coverage of the Workspace product (the JSF DataWindow is based on the DataWindow and the database painters are straight out of the PowerBuilder IDE), DataWindow.NET, and PocketBuilder. That is nothing new though, as we were also providing coverage for PowerJ when it was available (http://pbdj.sys-con.com/read/42196.htm).

Until recently the updates to PowerBuilder consisted of incremental improvements, not major new innovations. There have been innovations in the product over time that are significant enough that they spawn entire series of articles:

• PowerBuilder 2.0 (1992) - MDI support
• PowerBuilder 3.0 (1993) - DropDownDataWindows
• PowerBuilder 5.0 (1996) - Distributed PowerBuilder, overloaded functions, parameterized events and PFC
• PowerBuilder 7.0 (1999) - EAServer support, HTML DataWindow
• PowerBuilder 9.0 (2003) - PBNI, OrcaScript, Web Service Client Support
• PowerBuilder 11.0 (2007) - .NET targets

PowerBuilder is also experiencing a longer release cycle. As you can see from the release dates above, there were three years between release 3.0 and 5.0 and between 5.0 and 7.0. Yet there were four years between 7.0 and 9.0 and between 9.0 and 11.0. If we were to focus entirely on PowerBuilder, we would have found ourselves with less and less to talk about over more and more time.
With regard to that last point, I believe that 11.0 changes things. The introduction of .NET targets is one of those "earth-shattering" changes that should once again spawn a series of articles. As I noted in a recent editorial, Sybase also appears to be moving to more of an incremental release cycle, so that we'll see more point releases with more significant enhancements. 11.1 is already out, 11.2 should be out soon, and 11.5 is already announced.

If you aren't seeing coverage of a certain area of PowerBuilder that you have a lot of skill in, perhaps it's time for you to write an article and share that information with others. As we're always looking for new authors, contact me with your ideas and I'll send you the writer's guidelines to help you get started.

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