To paraphrase a real-estate saying, the key to a quality software product is design, design, design. While simple, single-developer applications can often be designed on the back of an envelope, today's enterprise applications cannot.

Your boss pays you a visit and brings you the pathname of a 30MB Adaptive Server Anywhere (ASA) database with a 6MB log file. 'Just got this from the New York office; they created it in ASA. Can we look at it?'

What's a Web site without a search engine? If you want your Web site or your company Web site to be cutting edge, this article shows you how.

The sport term 'transition game' is often used in basketball, as that game requires instantaneous transition from one modality to another.

There's a variety of programming languages worth taking a look at, many of which can be used in your EAServer and client/server projects.

Every software development project of any significant size or complexity has a requirement for controlling the source code asset. PowerBuilder is capable of integrating with any third-party Source Code Control (SCC) tool that implements Microsoft's SCC API.

PowerBuilder 9 will introduce faithful PB developers to the ability to build and use JavaServer Pages (JSPs) in their PowerBuilder Web applications. This is a giant step forward in Sybase's continuing march toward industry-leading openness.

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) makes it possible for automated code-generation tools, like PowerBuilder 9 with its Web services wizard, to simplify building clients for existing Web services.

With version 9.0, PowerBuilder continues to evolve into a true cross-platform development tool that supports the new open architecture standards, such as XML.

In my house there's an unwritten rule not to check e-mails on weekends. The weekends are for the biological family, not the virtual one. There's one huge problem with this system - checking my e-mail on Monday morning.

Perhaps you don't want all the users of your site to have the same type of access. Maybe you want to restrict some of the content to certain users, or know who uses what on your machine, or give different users a different color scheme on the page. In a nutshell: you want to know what your users are doing on the Web server. This article will get you started.

iAnywhere Wireless Server provides a comprehensive infrastructure for developing and deploying thin-client applications for mobile devices. Also called Web applications, they serve browser-based clients that have no local data storage capabilities.

In recent years, the arrival of multitiered architectures has made system designers more aware of the advantages of placing business logic in the appropriate tier, rather than hard coding everything into the visual component of an application.

The PFC error service allows applications to have a standard interface in which to display error messages to the user and log error messages to a disk file. In addition, the service e-mails the error to a system administrator (if a MAPI-compliant e-mail system exists).

Okay, so I've been promoting the inclusion of PB client/server articles, yet here I am writing about the Web DataWindow. Don't stop reading! This article applies to all PB developers, whether n-tier or client/server. That said, I now have to prove that this article is important to client/server developers....

For Sybase TechWave 2002 at the San Diego Convention Center, the PowerBuilder team has been getting ready to show off some of the next-generation capabilities currently under development for PowerBuilder 9.0.

Have you ever thought of adding new features to PowerBuilder? Or wanted to call Java or .NET from PowerScript? Or imagined that you can call PowerScript from C++ or Java? With PBNI, you can do them all and more. PowerBuilder Native Interface (PBNI) is a standard interface for third parties to extend the functionality of PowerBuilder.

Web services is an emerging technology driven by the will to securely expose business logic beyond the firewall. Through Web services you can encapsulate existing business processes, publish them as services, search for and subscribe to other services, and exchange information throughout and beyond the enterprise.

One of the things I've wanted to do is write a series of articles that provide you with a set of tips and tricks for using EAServer. This article is the first and contains one of the tricks that I discuss during my Tips and Tricks presentation at this year's TechWave. I hope to see you there.

A common question we see in the newsgroups is 'Where do I get the free version of InstallShield,' or something along those lines. The truth is that deploying PowerBuilder applications is so easy (in most cases) that a full-blown, large commercial tool like InstallShield is overkill (especially when coupled with a behemoth of complexity such as Windows Installer).

In Part 1 (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 6) I discussed directory services and how they provide authentication, access control, and finder services for our application. In Part 2, I explain how the JNDI API lets us easily use LDAP.

This is an exciting time for Sybase Education. Sybase products are robust and contain powerful features that were only dreamed of in the past. Learning remains the key to understanding and exploiting these new features. Leaping ahead of the curve is a challenge that Sybase Education can help you meet.

Relational databases often store hierarchical data, so it's no surprise that PowerBuilder provides the TreeView control for displaying and manipulating data. Nevertheless, using a DataWindow to simulate a TreeView is arguably a better solution than using the native control.

You don't know .NET. A lot of people seem to have a problem figuring out what .NET actually is. Many people thought it was a top-level domain from ICANN, while others thought it was a new software package from Microsoft akin to BackOffice.

In this article we'll be discussing some important events. No, we aren't talking about birthdays or anniversaries (although those are certainly important), but about critical PowerBuilder component life-cycle events that fire off inside EAServer and the effect various component properties have on these events.

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is for accessing online directory services. It runs directly over TCP and can be used to access a standalone LDAP directory service. Developed in the early 1990s, it defines how a client should access data on the server. It does not specify how the data should be stored on the server.

In Part 1 of this article (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 4) we discussed creating resource DLLs using the open-source LCC-WIN32 C compiler, maintaining string phrases in its IDE, and utilizing the compiled resource DLLs in our PowerBuilder application. Although that provides the basic technical foundation for internationalizing an application, it still doesn't cover many of the real-life issues that come up during the internationalization process, which is what we'll cover in Part 2.

This article is an overview of the structure of a Java program. My goal is to introduce the Java language to PowerBuilder programmers, pointing out striking similarities between the two languages. Although there may be some value in the simplicity of a 'Hello, world' program, it demonstrates something you basically wouldn't ever write code for, so it's not very helpful.

EAServer includes a powerful API called the Interface Repository. In this article I'll create a small service component to clean this repository of unwanted files that might be created when you deploy PowerBuilder components. I'll show how to get all the packages associated with your server and read your component's special properties.

Sybase is embracing the changing world of software development by driving PowerBuilder to new heights. As part of the product's strategic future, PowerBuilder will be extending its Web architecture capabilities. We have already provided an integrated RAD environment for developing Web applications. The future holds many promising Web capabilities, including Web services.

The number of PowerBuilder and EAServer solutions in production continues to grow. It would be an understatement to say that there's a large XML movement underway in the industry. While PowerBuilder 9.0 will include some exciting XML capabilities, this article focuses on building a solution that provides XML capabilities for DataWindows today, in PowerBuilder 7 and 8.

Expanding into other language markets presents an ample challenge for any PowerBuilder shop. In my case, we were faced with internationalizing our existing sales audit application into French (we're based in Quebec, where French versions of applications are required by law), as well as UK English (there are enough differences in retail terminology between North America and England to make this necessary).

In Part I of this series (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 2), I provided the necessary background information for building EAServer components. I also introduced the development workflow - a set of steps for building an application using EAServer components. Using the workflow, you can create a Web-based or a client/server application.

When Sybase released EAServer 4.0, it provided most of the J2EE functionality for the 1.3 specification, as well as performance and usability enhancements. EAServer 4.1 is not only J2EE 1.3-certified, but it also includes the required technology for the next wave of e-business - Web services.

WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol and is based on Wireless Markup Language (WML), which is closely related to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). WAP enables you to quickly and easily deliver information and services to mobile users. It's independent from any other mobile or network standard and is compatible with all popular mobile communication networks.

Last month, in a brief outburst of creative thought (some would say crazy thinking), I proposed to TeamSybase that the PBL has outlived its usefulness and should be ditched. I had a few arguments that sounded pretty good to me, and I think I responded pretty effectively to the few counterpoints that were raised.

In Part 1, 'The Java DataWindow' (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 2), I examined the Java DataWindow from the perspective of a classic client/server application that used a direct JDBC connection to the database. In Part 2 I use the same application source code and convert it to use EAServer connection caches for indirect access to the database.

I look up at the clock on the wall and see I have five minutes to finish my final in trigonometry. I don?t remember taking the course or attending one day of class, but here I am in the back of the room sweating like I did at the altar.

In Part 1 (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 2) I provided the information necessary to build EAServer components. I also introduced the development work flow, a set of steps to build an application using EAServer components. Using the workflow, you can create either a Web-based or a client/server application.

Struts is an open source initiative from the Jakarta Project written in Java. Sponsored by the Apache Software Foundation, the project's goal is to provide an open source framework that's useful for building Web applications with Java servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology. Struts encourages application architectures based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design paradigm.