The primary purpose of a database is to store and retrieve data. Obvious? Sure, but every once in while it's nice to return to the basics. For a long time we've known that good database design is essential to success.

PowerBuilder's Try-Catch-Finally exception handling mechanism brings a great deal of power and versatility to application and component development. It's important to be able to manage and handle exceptions thrown by service components, particularly when you are deploying to a Web environment.

It's no secret IT budgets aren't what they used to be. Across the industry projects are on hold because there isn't enough money.

While writing one of my PowerBuilder 9 book chapters, I suddenly had an idea. Wouldn't it be great to use PowerBuilder as a WAP front end?

From the PowerBuilder forums I've discovered that quite a few people are requesting a feature that allows them to write console applications with PowerBuilder. PowerBuilder doesn't support this feature natively right now, but we can already do it with PowerBuilder 9Swith the help of PBNI.

In an article in PBDJ last year ('Implementing PowerBuilder-Based Web Services from Dynamo') [Vol. 9, issue 10]), I showed how to create Web pages in PowerDynamo by calling a Web service created using PowerBuilder and EAServer (along with Apache SOAP) that allowed you to search the Sybase newsgroups.

External visual objects provide a mechanism for extending the IDE by adding controls created by third-party vendors. Unfortunately, PowerBuilder only creates the control visually and does not expose the attributes or methods. In essence, PowerBuilder simply calls CreateWindowEx using the given window class name.

I've heard it many times: training in general (not only Sybase classes) is so expensive. I agree, but believe me, it's worth every cent (I'll just be discussing the Sybase classes in this article).

All PowerBuilder developers know that the DataWindow is the component that made PowerBuilder the leading client/server development tool and keeps it going strong in the world of Internet database applications.

When a writer sits down to draft an article or story, she must consider her audience. In a similar manner, when a developer sits down to code a Pocket PC application, he needs to consider the environment in which the application will be deployed.

Over the past 11 years we've seen PowerBuilder grow and develop into the tool it is today. Originally for client/server, then incorporating component development and RAD thin-client development, PowerBuilder is still the best RAD 4 GL available

The newest addition to the PowerBuilder family of products from Sybase is Pocket PowerBuilder, which allows developers to quickly and easily create applications for the Pocket PC. This article provides some background for Pocket PowerBuilder and explains why Sybase believes that Pocket PowerBuilder will be successful.

One of the hallmarks of PowerBuilder is the ability to communicate with the full range of relational databases on the market. This is still the same with Pocket PowerBuilder...with a little twist.

Friday, 5:00 p.m. - my mind's already on the weekend's fishing when the finance manager barges in. 'I'm seeing the auditors Monday. I need last year's budget report and this year's forecast by 8:30 a.m. sharp!' Sounds easy. But last time I ran a budget report for one quarter it took over two hours.

Before we get too engrossed in making Win32 API calls, it's worthwhile spending a few moments on the underlying messaging system of the operating system. Understanding the message queue, and how controls interoperate when using it, will provide insight into the overall architecture of the GUI subsystem. Ultimately, this should lead to an appreciation of how and why the Win32 API is structured the way it is.

In Part 1 (PBDJ, Vol. 10, issue 6), I introduced a generic sorting and filtering window, w_sortfilter, that allows users to filter and sort any of their browsers. This window initially displays the columns in the browser DataWindow, but any sort and filter expressions currently set are not interpreted.

Are you a long-time PowerBuilder user who's still developing on an early version such as 5.x or 6.x? If so, now is the perfect time to move to PowerBuilder 9.0 for two reasons:

Each new version of the Windows operating system always brings several enhancements to the graphical user interface (GUI), including new controls. Some of these newer controls are often introduced in Internet Explorer upgrades. As a result, it becomes difficult for a development tool like PowerBuilder to offer immediate support for these new graphical controls.

The application I currently maintain has a generic sorting and filtering window that allows users to reduce the number and order of the rows they view on any of their browsers. The design took into consideration that our users don't want to learn PowerBuilder syntax to build a sort or filter expression. They formulate their expressions using a simple user interface (see Figure 1). Once they're done, the information is interpreted, formatted into valid sort and filter expressions, and applied to the browser DataWindow.

Have you ever looked at a rainbow and wondered how all the colors got there? Or wondered why grass looks green and your jeans blue? Well, if you sit in front of your computer as often as I do, you might not.

They are as basic as it gets. They are the one way we can look at data without restriction, using our own rules to define their existence, their transformation, and their value; they are the molding clay of data. We call them BLOBs. Once we know the structure of a file or any data, we can use a BLOB to mimic or manipulate it and, in some cases, create new files from scratch. What are BLOBs? Why should you care? And what can you use them for? Quite simply, BLOBs are how we handle data in a raw form, sometimes without any in-depth knowledge of their structure, just the knowledge that they exist.

The PowerBuilder DataWindow object is one of the main reasons for the success that PowerBuilder has achieved as a software development tool. Together, they have matured and developed. However, since the beginning the DataWindow has been used to display and manipulate data in the form of lists and reports as well as in various data input and maintenance forms.

Are you tired of searching the Internet for utilities, snippets, and bits of code to show you how to do something or even to do it for you? Many Web sites provide some of this, but they're spread all around the world. What if you could find everything in one place?

As architects of enterprise systems, we know that security should always be a concern when we transfer or store sensitive data. In the past, you might have cut corners because you assumed the corporate LAN provided some implicit level of protection. You might have rationalized that because only people with access to the LAN could see data being transferred across the wire - and surely no one at your company would try to steal sensitive data - your data was secure. Likewise, your internal applications might not have been passing sensitive information and you leveraged password protection on the operating system.

Relational databases often store hierarchical data, and PowerBuilder applications often display this data in TreeView controls. The hierarchy is typically stored in a series of parent and child tables, with one table per level.

The Sybase Enterprise Portal is ideal for organizations that are looking for a solution that allows developers to integrate existing enterprise content and applications as well as incorporate the tools that will enable them to access, manage, share, and understand them better.

For the new book PowerBuilder: Advanced Client/Server Development, Bill Green has contributed a chapter dedicated to the PB9 IDE. The IDE has not changed much from PB8 so he not only covers the new features but also describes important historical details about the IDE and provides tips on the best ways to use it. The following is a small portion of the chapter that I think you'll find educational.

Adaptations...as software developers we thrive on adaptations. A large part of our present and future work is and will be simply morphing or adapting our previous efforts or the efforts of others before us.

Bosses are the backbone of middle American management and the harbinger of the quick-fix style. Some bosses are good; some can be a nightmare. There may be a lot of truth to that old saying, 'We have a new boss, same as the old boss,' but it doesn't necessarily comprise the truth in the IS world.

In Part 1 (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 11), we discussed a lot of different languages that could be compiled to Java bytecode. This month I'll provide a real example by using Jython in EAServer. Botanists know that if you cross-pollinate two different strains of plants, you create a hybrid, a new plant that exhibits the strengths of both its parents. Jython is a programming hybrid, an implementation of the Python scripting language written in 100% Pure Java that runs under any compliant Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

You're all ready to go. The project has been approved and you're in charge of setting up the development environment. This article discusses some of the recent changes in the PowerBuilder project development process, and how your team can leverage both old and new techniques to make your application a success.

The task of restoring the dataobject of a DataWindow (DW) or DataStore (DS) dynamically at runtime has been discussed many times in PBDJ. One method is to use DW syntax, but it has some limitations. It doesn't work for composite DWs or DWs with nested reports.

How can Sybase's EAServer architecture help create a bridge between the worlds of Java and PowerBuilder to access advanced cryptographic functionality that isn't natively available in PowerBuilder?

In my early PowerBuilder days, I was very impressed with how easy it was to create and format DataWindows for either online or printed reports. At its easiest, a simple print method is required to send a 'What you see is what you get' version of the DataWindow to the printer. Even when the printed version of a DataWindow is different from the visual one, a simple ShareData() function would be all that is required.

XML is fast becoming the de facto industry standard for intercomponent and interapplication data transfer. While XML is more commonly used in distributed environments, it can be just as useful, and, at times necessary, in more traditional client/server applications.

One of the biggest problems in an enterprise is deploying the application. Usually you have to deliver a new release of your application to several hundred workstations. This may be a time-consuming and very cost-intensive task.

Sybase EAServer provides great enhancements for J2EE support in the new 4.x releases. One of them is complete support of the Java Servlet 2.3 specification. In this specification, a new filter mechanism is introduced that enables developers to have centralized control of the entries and exits of their Web applications.

The DataWindow has been around since the first version of PowerBuilder and is indeed the reason many shops have chosen PB. Around for over 10 years, it has remained the most powerful data control in any language.

In the early days of PowerBuilder, who would have ever envisioned that so much Web development could be accomplished with our beloved IDE? Historically, PowerBuilder programmers haven't been exposed to applications that demand high levels of security, but that's changing - rapidly. PKI, digital signatures, and other forms of mathematically based cryptography are now mainstream and being backed by powerhouses, like the U.S. government who signed a law two years ago that makes digital signatures as legal and binding as their analog cousins (E-SIGN Act).

New XML services in PowerBuilder 9.0 provide a number of PowerScript functions and classes for users to create, read, write, and manipulate XML documents. It's a toolkit for working with XML at a high level and is engineered to extend PowerBuilder's RAD to XML applications. With XML services in PowerBuilder, developers can make their PowerBuilder applications communicate with external applications via XML messages.