Have you ever needed a DataWindow with drag-drop capabilities to reorder the rows? If so, you probably soon realized there was no easy way to indicate to the user where the row would be dropped. This article describes an effective solution for providing a target row indicator for drag-drop functionality in DataWindows.

PowerBuilder 7's IDE has many new features that can speed the development of an application. However, I've had a hard time adjusting to the change in the database painter. Despite the added features, the catalog maintenance and database administrator are slightly more difficult to use.

The HTML DataWindow is a great starting tool for any PB programmer. When I began developing applications for the Web knowing little if any HTML, using the HTML DataWindow enabled me to deploy data to the Web immediately.

Techno-Kitten.com announced the release of the lastest version of PBL Peeper. Version 1.3.1 includes a number of enhancements and bug fixes and can be downloaded from their Web site. www.techno-kitten.com PBBrowser Beta 8/19 OOWidgets announced the availability of a beta version of PBBrowser. The beta includes a number of new features and bug fixes and can be downloaded from their Web site.www.oowidgets.com

Almost every application has one or more long-running processes. Typically these are things like importing, export and reporting. Waiting for the processes to complete can be tedious for your users. There are techniques you can use to make this less painful. When designing a long running process, there are two concepts to keep in mind. First, your user interface should always be active and responsive. In other words, the user interface should always re-draw itself. Second, you should endeavor to show the progress to the user as your process executes. Keep the user updated and he'll be more patient. However, writing your code to do these two things well can be rather tricky. This article will illustrate common ways to do both.

In this article I'll share my experiences of working with the PFC DropDown Calendar and show you how to make this custom user object user-friendly. If you've tried to use this custom visual object, you may have discovered that the PFC Calendar won't populate a calendar if you use a datetime type instead of a date type column.

Overloading allows two or more functions to have the same name and return type, if their signature is different. The function signature is defined by its number and types of arguments. When you call an overloaded function, PowerBuilder decides which version of the function to call based on the function signature. This can be exploited to determine an object's type at runtime. This article presents a couple of practical applications of this technique, and describes a third situation where a different technique is required.

There are files that come with EAServer that were hidden from me when I first started using EAS. These files, primarily utilities, can solve some common and important programming tasks. This article essentially covers two of these files or utilities, one named javaqry.ssc; and the other, JavaWrappers.ssc.

After years of considering what types of controls to put in a Web page, the main technologies that work are ActiveX, Java and DHTML. I thought only Java or ActiveX could provide the types of controls I needed, until I saw the game Asteroids, written in DHTML.

Some of the most popular new features in PowerBuilder 7 are the wizards because they make it easy to perform complicated, multipart tasks. However, the first time I ran PB7 and attempted to create a Jaguar component I was stunned to find identically labeled, as well as nearly identically labeled, options on three of the tabs in the 'New' dialog (to get to the New dialog, launch PowerBuilder, then choose File/New off the main menu).

Imagine creating your own Web browser that can provide the full power of Internet Explorer (IE) including scripting, parsing and rendering of HTML pages. It has become standard for stand-alone and client/server applications to contain Web browsers. A perfect example is Intuit's popular Quicken program. Quicken has the normal look and feel of a stand-alone application, but the startup sheet is a Web browser that presents up-to-the-minute Intuit information to the user. You too can build this functionality into your PowerBuilder application. In this article I'll describe how to use Microsoft's WebBrowser ActiveX control to build your own Web browser application in PowerBuilder.

Imagine hiring a crew to put an addition on your home. As capable as they seem, you can't help being concerned over the fact that they've shown up for work without any power tools. Every instrument they use looks like it came from Olsen's Mercantile in Little House on the Prairie. When you ask the crew why they don't own any power tools, the foreman responds, 'Oh, we own them. We're just more comfortable with these hand tools.' After explaining how they could cut their work time in half by using them, the crew concede, break out the power tools and bring in the backhoe. You look in horror as you see them using these expensive devices in the same fashion as their hand tools. They drive nails by smashing them with the nail gun. They cut wood by manually pushing the electric saw back and forth. We won't even mention how they're using the backhoe.

You stumble on a bug in your application. In order to troubleshoot it you need to see the raw data inside your DataWindow but the columns you need aren't visible. ... You open a window in your application, and even though you don't change any of its data it still prompts you to save when closing. What has changed? ... A drop-down DataWindow isn't displaying the right values at runtime, but it retrieves just fine when you preview it at design time. Where's the data? ... You're pulling your hair out trying to get some modify/describe syntax to work, and it's taking forever between changing your code, saving and rerunning your application. Can you possibly get the syntax right and still get home on time?

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI) is one customer who's leveraged PowerBuilder and EAServer to develop an intranet solution. This application has provided BCBSRI with tremendous cost savings and enhanced performance.