In June of 2007, Sybase released PowerBuilder 11. PowerBuilder developers can now deploy PowerBuilder components as .NET Assemblies or as .NET Web Services. A PowerBuilder developer can now create these .NET resources so that those who develop .NET solutions can benefit from PowerBuilder and DataWindow productivity regardless of what development tool they use. PowerBuilder 11 also gives its users the ability to deploy entire applications as ASP .NET Web Forms applications (WebForm) as well as to deploy entire applications as .NET Windows Forms (WinForm) applications.

A shortcoming of PocketBuilder 1.x and 2.x has always been the difficulty in accessing Web Services. This shortcoming had always irritated us, but the limitations of the PocketPC and the size of the traditional PowerBuilder approach prevented us from providing an adequate traditional solution. We have a sample up on CodeXchange that wraps a simple API around the free 'Pocket SOAP' client, but that had its own limitations and we were never really satisfied with it.

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys like a piano, used by one hand. The problem was, Engelbart's five-finger keyboard and mouse combination was very difficult to learn.

The release-defining feature of PowerBuilder 11 is its ability to deploy existing applications as .NET Windows Forms and Web Forms applications and components of business logic, namely custom-class user objects (NVOs), as .NET assemblies and Web Services. Although PowerBuilder's adoption of the .NET Framework represents a great leap forward for application developers, the implications of converting a desktop, client/server application to an ASP.NET Web application are significant.

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of the biggest complaints I hear about PowerBuilder is how the applications developed with it end up looking old and outdated.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.

PBDJ's readers ask us from time to time what the most popular article in the magazine has been over recent years. We are delighted to report that the answer is that it is one by our very own and much loved editor-in-chief, Bruce Armstrong. We first published it in 2005. Here it is again in full so that you can enjoy Bruce's insights into the endless scope for customization in PowerBuilder.

In the adventurous world of software development, we have all come to experience, criticize, and embrace many software lifecycle approaches (e.g., RUP, Agile, Scrum, XP, etc.). At their core, they intend to identify various stages in the software process and optimize their instrumentation through various iterative techniques. Through my own consulting experience on many projects, I have come to expect a slightly different discrete set of 'stages' that invariably accompany software endeavors.

When I was just starting my career in programming, I thought I would be creating new applications. And I did - I created a few applications from scratch. Maybe two or three of them. But for the most part what I've been doing is working with code written by someone else a while ago - legacy code. What is legacy code? You could define legacy code as ancient applications that were written in the past.

SMS or Short Messaging Service is being used by millions of mobile phone users as you read this article. Here is a fact...Sybase 365 aids the delivery of nearly 6 billion messages each month. Originally limited to 160 characters and the small phone keyboard, SMS language was born on December 3, 1992, when an engineer named Neil Papworth sent the very first SMS with 'MERRY CHRISTMAS' on it to his colleagues at Vodafone in Great Britain.

Roughly two years ago, when I was writing an article on 'New Features for Device Developers in Visual Studio 2005' that was published in the August 2005 issue of .NET Developer's Journal, our program management team was already busy shaping the next release of the product, which is soon to be released as Visual Studio 2008. We spent a lot of time talking to our major customers and reviewing the feedback we got on blogs and questions on forums on newsgroups to identify what enhancements/features would be most useful to our device developers.

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 started my Blog in August of 2005 I have seen a steady increase in unique visits to my site. This whole Blog experience of course is Reed Shilt's fault. Reed is the development manager for PocketBuilder and started the whole thing off by opening his own Blog within PBDJ, then sending me an invitation to join him in this new venue. At that point in time, Blogging was a whole new experience for me and in fact, I had not even heard the term until I received Reed's email.

Software testing is an indispensable part of software development; it aims to assess the software quality and confirm whether the functions meet the requirements defined at the start of the project. In 1990 the IEEE/ANSI defined testing as: 'The process of operating a system or component under specified conditions, observing or recording the results, and making an evaluation of some aspect of the system or component.' (IEEE/ANSI, 1990 [Std 610.12-1990]). The 'specified conditions' could be comprehended as requirements or designs.

In the past decade, the software industry has evolved significantly, especially in the enterprise application development area. And the biggest evolution has been the transition from client/server applications to Web based applications.

Six years ago I was asked to implement a data repository to hold network management and performance data. With monitoring systems, databases have a tendency to be large, and have a delicate balance between inserting (logging) new data and deleting old (aging) data out from the system. The SQL Anywhere server database from iAnywhere was what the customer wanted to use, so I first had to evaluate if it could handle the expected load.

This article describes the architecture and features of the Web application development tooling in WorkSpace 1.5, how to develop these powerful JSF DataWindow components, and then use them in a JSF Web application, as well as how to integrate Web applications into a Service Oriented Architecture.

I used to implement SMTP for PowerBuilder using a PBNI class that used P.J. Naughter's CPJNSMTPConnection MFC class to do the heavy lifting. Well, .NET 2.0 changes all that. One of the new features of .NET 2.0 is the introduction of a SMTPClient class. One of the features of .NET since it was introduced is the ability of non-.NET applications to call .NET components through the use of a COM Callable Wrapper (CCW).

At Nielsen Media Research (NMR), the Core Business Architecture group recently completed a project to evaluate where systems support business processes poorly or not at all. Our first challenge was to determine the format to use in capturing the information.

EAServer 6.0 brings with it many new and exciting changes on a number of fronts, not the least of which is its management console, EAServer Manager. Many of the changes wrought in the console are simple byproducts of the changes in the underlying server, so I won't delve into them. Instead I'll deal with changes to the console itself, discussing the most notable ones and hopefully giving you a good feel for what's in store.

According to the programmers' guide provided with EAS (5.x), a Web application is a unit of deployment for interrelated Web content, JavaServer Pages (JSPs), and Java servlets. Generally, a Web application developer under EAS must create JSP files and/or Java servlets. Sometimes, however, it would be better to use some other techniques to save development time. It is possible that there is already a similar open source Web page, or there might be a demand to run a complete Web application not written in Java/JSP code under EAS.

Did you know you can make automated installs for your PocketPC and SmartPhone applications created with PocketBuilder? When you use a PocketBuilder project to compile your application, it automatically creates an _setup.ini file that can be fed to a third-party EZSetup program to create the installation executable (see Listing 1). It also creates a _makecab.bat file that is used to create the CAB file (see Listing 2). The project even automatically executes that file. That batch file includes a commented-out call to the EZSetup program.

PowerBuilder provides the send() function to send messages to the Windows objects. The information about its usage is fragmentary and widely dispersed throughout the help and manuals. Since searching for this information was quite tedious, I decided to write down what information I could gather.

One of the long awaited features introduced in PowerBuilder 10.5 is support for contemporary (aka Office XP) menus and toolbars. The first difference you'll notice is that the flat contemporary style and new icons are used extensively throughout the PowerBuilder IDE itself (Figure 1).

The PowerBuilder Application Server Plugin (PASP) is a new product offering from Sybase. It's currently in beta as part of the EAServer 6.0 beta; however, when released it will be distributed as a separate product. The PASP allows PowerBuilder developers to deploy PowerBuilder components to third-party application servers (JBoss, WebSphere, WebLogic, etc.), much the same as they can with EAServer today. This is of particular importance in companies that have already standardized on a non-EAServer application server.

In a previous article (PBDJ, vol. 12, issue 5) I wrote about the best file formats for using Windows XP icons in PowerBuilder. In the summary of that article I mentioned how to create your own XP style icons. A number of people have since contacted me asking for more detail on how to create such icons and a second article on how to go about creating icons for their own applications.

Sybase has recently included impact analysis features into the PowerDesigner (PD) modeling tool. If you aren't familiar with PD, it's a powerful tool for modeling business processes, data designs, XML messages, and application logic (ala UML). Within each model, you can view the dependent objects (basically, what would be affected if you deleted something).

As I started a new PocketBuilder application and wanted to encompass some of the 'context sensitive' help features that I have previously used in a PowerBuilder application. I knew that this was not going to be easy, as the Pocket PC operating system does not support the (Multiple Document Interface) behavior. As a result, neither the Micro-Help bar nor pop-up help (also known as 'bubble help') are available as they would be in a standard PowerBuilder application. PowerBuilder developers also use a nice feature named 'PowerTipText' that allows automatic 'bubble' help to appear during a mouse hover.

In the early days of Java, a sample application called Java Pet Store was introduced as a 'blueprint and guideline' for Java development. A few years later when Microsoft introduced .NET, they also provided a similar sample application to demonstrate preferred methods of coding for .NET called .NET Pet Shop. That has subsequently resulted in a bit of warfare as the two camps attempted to demonstrate why their implementation was a better, higher-performance implementation.

For years, people have said that PowerBuilder Foundation Classes (PFC) has a steep learning curve. Drives me crazy. Don't believe it for a minute. While it's true that there is a lot to learn about PFC, the same can be said of cars, but few of us learn the intricacies of ignition systems before learning to drive.

The PowerBuilder DataWindow object is a powerful presentation component. By using the built-in DataWindow functions within DataWindow object expressions, complex user interfaces can be developed, and by using PowerBuilder's Windows ActiveX control the same component can be embedded in a browser.

We've heard the rumors. Could this really be the last version of PowerBuilder? Not by a long shot. We're busy creating and evolving your favorite product. I must admit, before joining Sybase I heard the rumors myself and wondered about their validity.

Over the past 10 years, corporations have experienced a dramatic change in the way they store and process information. In the early 1990s corporate information systems tended to be isolated from one another.

Your company decides to implement a mobile application initiative and has chosen which database, handheld, and software packages to use. A new year has begun and new projects will be started, so now is the time to think about what we are doing, what our jobs are, and how we understand enterprise computing.

Time is passing, as that is its nature. Outside of overdone science fiction, there really is no moving backward. The future is variable-filled, uncertainty looming ahead like an audit of a badly run project. What do we dare in the coming days? What will this New Year hold for us IT professionals?

I'm sure many of you have experienced the same problems within your company as I've experienced at my work these past few months. We have a single database server serving every part of our information processing community within our company, from transaction to batch processing to analytical processing.

Recently, my development team was asked to modify our inventory management application to use Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) as its back-end database instead of Sybase's SQL Anywhere (ASA).

Security is always a hot topic. How do we make sure that data can be accessed only by those who are allowed to access it? Working in conjunction with encryption, the current mainstream solution is passwords, which is not ideal.

Your company decides to implement a mobile application initiative and has chosen which database, handheld, and software packages to use. They're ready to start creating a mobile solution when someone asks, 'How do we deploy a new version?'

Chapter 5 of PowerBuilder 9: Advanced Client/Server Development included a discussion on how to add items to the New dialog within the PowerBuilder IDE. This article will review that information and look at a couple of additional techniques for extending the PowerBuilder IDE

There are times when it seems that the most well intentioned and seemingly helpful IT professionals are simply standing in the way of the progress of business. It may seem preposterous to some of you, probably raise a few hackles no doubt. 'Hey, not us.

A long time ago, after I had finished school and worked as a C++ developer, I started programming with PowerBuilder. I was not one of the best database developers; in fact, I was more than happy to create DataWindows without a Cartesian product. But over the years I learned a lot and lost my fear of the complexity of database servers.