Sybase has just released the latest version of its premier .NET development tool in PowerBuilder version 11.2. I am proud to say that I haven't missed a beta since November 1989 (version 0.8) and that includes PocketBuilder and InfoMaker too. I need to thank the people at Sybase for continuing to let me test drive their new code.

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.

PowerBuilder offers some dynamic querying capabilities. For simple scenarios it works quite well. But what if your scenario isn't simple? What if you wanted to write a database-querying tool that provides stored procedure compilation, ShowPlan display, or the execution of large complicated batch scripts?

In the first article we presented a some theories about the ClassDefinition object and were able to show the libraries of a PB application in a treeview control. This month we'll read the objects from the libraries and inspect their content. When a user expands an entry in the treeview, we check to see if it was expanded once already. If it was, we don't take any action.

We begin this article by asking the question: Why would you want to integrate real-time GPS data into your PowerBuilder applications anyway? After all, it's not likely you are going to connect a GPS receiver to your desktop computer and ask yourself where you are currently located. (At least I hope not!)

PowerBuilder contains a number of built-in common dialogs that can be used within your own applications. What do you do when one of these dialogs meets most, but not quite all, of the functionality you need? Do you simply accept the limited functionality? Do you write your own dialog from scratch to replicate them and add the additional functionality (a maintenance headache)? There is a third option. You can simply use the dialog that PowerBuilder provides and modify it at runtime to provide just the additional functionality that you need. The dialogs PowerBuilder provides include: The GetFileOpenName, GetFileSaveName, ChooseColor, GetFolder, PrintSetup, and PrintSetupPrinter system function dialogs The DataWindow Control SaveAs, SetFilter, and SetSort function dialogs The DataWindow object DataWindow.Print.Prompt attribute dialog The ubiquitous MessageBox dialog. For the purposes of this article we're going to use the DataWindow control SaveAs dialog, but the technique can be used to customize any common dialog.

As a PowerBuilder developer I'm sure you have already used SQL Anywhere a few times, but did you know that SQL Anywhere owns over 70% of the mobile database market? This is because it's easy to use, easy to administer, and doesn't take up too much space.

An enterprise portal is the converged 'hub' of multiple, complementary information management solutions, including document and content management, information search and retrieval, knowledge management, team collaboration, workflow, and business intelligence.

POWERBUILDER PB2XLS 1.2 7/07 – Desta announced the release of PB2XLS 1.2. PB2XLS is a component for PowerBuilder applications that allows the developer to create Excel files, write information into cells and worksheets, and format cells and worksheets. www.desta.com.ua/pb2xls/

Sybase announced the general availability of Pocket PowerBuilder, the new integrated application development environment designed to simplify and speed the creation of mobile and wireless enterprise applications.

It's an aesthetic thing. When you click on a grid DataWindow label and change an attribute, it acquires what are formally termed UGBs - Ugly Grid Borders.

Sybase announced second quarter 2003 total revenues of $192.0 million, including license fees of $63.9 million, exceeding First Call consensus revenue estimates of $186.5 million.

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I'd give you some of the 'tricks and treats' that I've collected over the years for PowerBuilder, InfoMaker, and Sybase ASE.

In early versions of PowerBuilder, development primarily consisted of three types: composing graphic objects by adding visual controls; coding functions and events using PowerBuilder's native language, PowerScript; and creating DataWindow objects.

Sybase announced it has entered into a long-term strategic partnership with Appeon Corporation to deliver a revolutionary solution to generate rich Web applications from PowerBuilder client/server applications.

In this article I'll show you how to play MP3 files with your own 'sound machine' written in PowerBuilder. But before we start to implement it, you should first understand what MP3 is.

Myth: 'Creating reports with InfoMaker is easy,' a partially accurate statement, on the surface. Reality: Let's change that to: 'Formatting your report with the InfoMaker tool is easy, once you've figured out the data to be reported.'

When I started using distributed DataWindows, the slow performance frightened me, usually when the middle server and the client were in separate computers. At that time I was using a PIII 500 desktop computer, and a PIII 800 database server over a 10MB network. Although it's not the top-of-the-line hardware environment, it's still the best some customers can get.

Sybase announced the availability of EAServer 4.2, an open application server that has been selected by a growing number of state and regional governments for its uncompromising performance and support for secure Web services within an 'open-choice' development and deployment environment. As evidenced by forward-thinking customers including Hennepin County, Minnesota; the Texas Workforce Commission; and Wellington City Council, New Zealand, government agencies and enterprises alike are increasingly turning to Sybase EAServer for the technology infrastructure to help them unlock the value of their existing data and to quickly develop and deploy new services and applications.

'The tag property takes a string value.' That's what PB Help tells us about the tag property. Not much considering all or at least most PB objects have a 'tag' property. What's its mission in life? Anything we want it to be.

The DropDownDataWindow (DDDW) edit style is one of PowerBuilder's outstanding features. Yes, I know there are a lot of new and exciting capabilities in the upcoming release of PowerBuilder, but in this article I'll try to solve some of the current problems with the existing features that are popping up in nearly every project I've seen.

My son is only 18-months old but I have taken more pictures of him than I can count. Thanks to digital cameras it's so easy to take and store pictures. Since I spend most of my time on the computer, I formed the habit of changing the Windows desktop with his latest portrait both at work and at home. However, the initial excitement faded due to my inherent laziness.

Now that the holidays are over, it's back to work, back to school...and back to the basics. In my December column, 'PowerBuilder and ODBC 101' (PBDJ, Vol. 9, issue 12), we discussed hooking up to a database via ODBC.

The plane has leveled off at 39,000 feet and I'm on my way home after spending two weeks in Europe. It's been an interesting trip - traveling to the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and Russia.

Interfaces are one of the most important concepts that have found their way into modern software engineering in the past couple of years. Java, COM, CORBA, C# - all those languages/concepts support interfaces. PowerBuilder does not. This article shows you how to sneak the interface concept into PB by using some of its special features.

PowerBuilder 9 will make the creation and consumption of Web services easier; however, we don't have to wait for its release to take advantage of these features.

If you're using PowerBuilder 6 or 7 for new development, you should really be using PB 8. It's the fastest way to build a new client/server application or move PowerBuilder business logic to a distributed n-tier environment.

When moving applications to the Web, one of the challenges facing developers is how to migrate rich client features to a browser environment. Two features that can give your Web applications a boost in both appearance and functionality are popup calendars and lookup (search) windows.

New to PowerBuilder 8.0 is the ability to deploy your DataWindows to a Web server as self-contained components. These new components are called Web DataWindow Containers. These containers will convert your collection of DataWindows into HTML with the aid of your Component Transaction Monitor (EAServer or an equivalent server).

If asked to name tasks that get in the way of the creativity and enjoyment of application development, developers of any language would produce a similar shortlist. Testing, documentation, source control management, and tracking project time are but a few. PowerBuilder developers have their own tribulations.

Once upon a time there was a source code editor called 'Brief.' Okay, so it was DOS-based and had an ugly interface. However, it had one feature I truly loved, a 'code snippet' manager. You could have your favorite block of code inserted into your source with a few keystrokes. Eventually, I stopped writing Clipper code and started using PowerBuilder, which didn't have this built-in feature...until now.

It would be better to live in a world of best-case scenarios, where all parts of the enterprise puzzle are provided by the same vendor. But that's the exception rather than the rule. It's often the case in the modern enterprise that companies will standardize on technologies from a wide variety of vendors and platforms. As programmers we often don't get as much input into those decisions as we want. We end up having to develop in a tool provided by one vendor, with access code running in an application server provided by another, using a communication protocol developed by yet a third.

Novalys announced the release of Visual Expert for PowerBuilder. Visual Expert helps developers work on any PowerBuilder application, even ones they're not familiar with. After it has analyzed the application, Visual Expert provides graphic views, inheritance diagrams, impact analyses, and technical documentation. www.novalys.net/info/visu alexpert.htm

As of Sybase's EAServer 4.0, OEM developers and IT organizations can take advantage of two new installation features that allow them to create and deploy applications with an embedded installation of EAServer. EAServer 4.0 includes features that improve the ability of OEM vendors and IT departments to create and deploy applications that include EAServer. Through EAServer version 3.6.1, end users needed to install EAServer separately from the application using the standard dialog-driven setup routine. Developers deployed their components and applications using Jaguar Manager to install JAR, Jaguar JAR, WAR, and EAR files.

Sybase announced the general availability of EAServer 4.0. EAS 4.0 provides support for J2EE 1.3, EJB 2.0, updated connectors, an exposed JMS API, Web server plug-ins, unified install, and added JDMK API. It also now handles JSP and servlet requests directly from the user's Web server. Finally, EAServer 4.0 now supports the Linux platform and continues to support Microsoft Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, and IBM-AIX.

PowerBuilder has been around for 10 years, and has grown exponentially in that time. Now, in 2001, PowerBuilder has matured to a new level - version 8 There were a lot of 'firsts' with PowerBuilder, and now it has become the unquestioned development productivity tool for the enterprise.

My last article (PBDJ, Vol. 8, issue 6), which introduced PowerBuilder 8 and Web targets, demonstrated how to create Web pages from within the PB development environment. This article reviews the 4GL Web server-side event model and discusses how it helps reduce development time and effort. Using this event model allows developers to concentrate on business logic and interface design rather than the low-level details of accessing EAServer components.

Sybase announced that it has completed its acquisition of New Era of Networks, Inc., an e-business enabler based in Englewood, Colorado. New Era of Networks stockholders approved the conversion of the company's remaining outstanding shares of common stock into the right to receive 0.3878 shares of Sybase common stock per share. Sybase had earlier acquired approximately 80% of the stock pursuant to an exchange offer that concluded April 26, 2001. New Era of Networks, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sybase, will be operated as part of the Sybase e-business division with Rick Adam as its president.

I realize that many people are talking about nothing but Java, and yes, I'm writing Java components myself; however, PowerBuilder still lives on. There are many existing PowerBuilder client/server applications in production that need to be maintained and many that need to be moved to the Web. PowerBuilder 8 has some nice development features that make it an environment for PowerBuilder applications as well as Web applications. This article discusses the new user interface and concentrates on Web targets.

PowerBuilder 8 6/12 Sybase announced the general availability of PowerBuilder 8 in conjunction with the celebration of the tenth anniversary of PowerBuild er(http://my.sybase.com/d etail/1,3693,1012932,00.h tml). The features in the new version are discussed in a number of articles in this same issue of PBDJ.