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. Eventual

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

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,

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 wi

Welcome back to the JSP Corner. In this series, we're looking at developing Web applications using Java-Server Pages (JSP) and Jaguar CTS (aka EAServer). In Part 1 of this series (PBDJ, Vol. 8, issue 9), we looked at the advantages JSP has over competitive dynamic page server t

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.

San Diego - the city by the bay - hosted TechWave 2001, August 12-16, and by all indications the city and Sybase did a great job. As the Sybase loyal fought the economic slowdown and budget cuts to attend the annual gathering, Sybase prepared a show that harkened back to the exciting d

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

For developers looking at the complex problem of building Web applications that produce dynamically generated content, using JavaServer Pages (JSP) is an excellent solution. JSP is a Web-scripting specification developed by Sun and the Java Community Process (JCP) and implemented b

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

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 enterpris

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 0.38

A few years ago Brian Wesselink took over as director of Sybase's North America Education. Brian received a B.S. in mathematics from Central College in Iowa in 1969 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Florida State University in 1973. He was an associate professor of mathematics and comput

Though I spend most of my time consulting on software systems, I also have the pleasure of teaching a variety of courses on Sybase Tools. As a Certified Sybase Instructor, I was able to attend a recent conference in Santa Fe that Sybase put on for its instructors. While there, I sat in

In Part 1 (PBDJ, Vol. 8, issue 5) I showed you how to use simple graphics within your applet. Polygons, ovals, lines, and text cover a lot of ground. The remaining graphic object you need is an image. Images in Java are bitmapped GIF or JPEG files that can contain pictures of just a

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 article

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 move

In this issue Tim Nesham covers in-depth the TRY-CATCH-FINALLY block, which is new to PowerBuilder 8. But what is really happening behind the scenes? This article will give some historical background on PowerBuilder, but will also focus on PowerBuilder exception handling.

Complex graphics programming is something we rarely do in PowerBuilder. Most of the programs we write include objects that interact with the user and usually don't require graphics.

This article demonstrates how to use JavaServer Pages (JSP) to manipulate PowerBuilder DataWindows. We'll create a Jaguar- CTS component in PowerBuilder and call it from JSP. Using techniques from our Hepek Dual Architecture Framework, we'll show how to Web-enable your existing DataWin

My last two articles focused on the fundamentals of Java and the utility that Java offers. Last month you learned how to create and run a simple applet.

The development of the Web DataWindow is a great technological advancement. It's extremely helpful in moving an existing PowerBuilder application to the Web. Most PowerBuilder applications contain many DataWindows for the various screens and reports. The ability to quickly render the

This month we'll discuss how to build and deploy simple Java applets. By the end of this article, you should have the skill set needed to write, compile, deploy, and run simple Java applets. As you'll soon see, the coding portion of this is relatively easy. The real challenge is unders

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-

We've spent two articles now on Sherlock (PBDJ, Vol. 7, issues 8 and 10). This is an application that will use dynamic DataWindows to create reports for the example database provided with PowerBuilder. Using this tool we'll learn about dynamic DataWindows and how to create them.

Many PowerBuilder developers have tried writing Web applications in EAServer, building long strings of HTML in their components to create on-the-fly Web pages. Sometimes you get good response time...and sometimes the response time gets you.

To this day my mother refuses to make deposits via her bank's ATM. Her reason is a valid one: she doesn't trust a machine with her money. You get no real validation from the ATM, just a receipt stating the amount you said was in your envelope.

A component that's sitting on EAServer doesn't do us any good unless we call it from somewhere. We may call these components from several different sources. In this article we'll call them from the Active Server Pages (ASP) front end.

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.

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.

In the October issue of PBDJ we worked on the design for our mail server on Jaguar. This is more accurately called an MDA, or Mail Delivery Agent. What we're writing isn't the application that will receive raw messages from the Internet, parse them out, then store them for another appl

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

Most PowerBuilder developers are aware of object-oriented concepts like inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. A lot has been said about them, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel by discussing what they are and how they're used in PB applications. The main purpose of this ar

Imagine creating a DropDownDataWindow look and feel using HTML form elements that can show more than one column in a ListBox on a Web page. The data elements could be generated using Web server-side technologies such as JavaServer Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages (ASP), and ColdFusion

My first column on Sherlock appeared in the August issue of PBDJ (Vol. 7, issue 8). In that article we set up our development environment. Now we need to log in. Before we do that let's review just a bit.

This issue of PBDJ contains an article written by Tom Hughes that provides us with a service object quite suitable for traditional two-tier applications. My article shows how to expand that technology and move the object to a Jaguar component so we can handle e-mail from a central spot

This year's TechWave was a marked improvement over the last few years. Overall I'd have to say that 1994 and 1995 were the best Sybase Tools conferences ever. Since then their value to me has declined, though they were still worth the time and money. The two areas in which I've been di

'Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends, we hope you will attend, step inside, step inside.' Those words - from an old song by Emerson, Lake and Palmer - have been floating through my head all day, ever since I decided on the subject of my next series of articles on the

Since Web DataWindow technology is now used as a building block for many applications, Sybase decided to enhance this functionality and provide some much needed bug fixes. I recently met with the Web DataWindow team to demonstrate what I've been doing for my clients and to discuss some

Okay, it's a common enough observation - heck, it may even be a cliché - but ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, some clichés are true: presentation is everything.