In PowerBuilder 11.2, .NET meets J2EE head-on with the capability to deploy .NET Windows Forms and Web Forms applications (as well as assemblies and Web Services) that access Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) in Sybase's own EAServer. As you'll see over the course of this article, integratin...

HarPB is a specialized utility for checking PowerBuilder source objects in and out of AllFusion Harvest. It handles the special requirements of checking objects out to PowerBuilder Libraries (PBLs) and checking objects in from PBLs. These operations are non-standard to most source cont...

I have been asked many times by various clients, students, and the IT curious about PowerBuilder: When did Sybase develop the product and how did it evolve? I keep telling this story and answering e-mails on the subject. I am now to the point where I have decided that I should have PBD...

PowerBuilder 11 deploys entire applications as .NET Windows Form or Web Form applications and deploys individual components as .NET Assemblies and as .NET Web Services. Version 11 consumes resources of the default .NET framework as well as resources of custom developer-defined .NET res...

The lines between embedded and enterprise computing are blurring. As embedded devices become more and more networked, they form a perimeter at the edge of our enterprise data centers and a rich source of real-time, real-world information. These newcomers to the enterprise are coming of...

In this article we're going to take a database and create our own mini version of an 'Amazon-like' item lookup. That is to say, any .NET or .NET-compatible client will be able to look up items in our database via the Web by simply providing a UPC. This article will show you how. To com...

If that doesn't ring a bell, it's from the Reagan / Carter debates in the 1980 election cycle. Carter had presented a string of criticisms of Reagan's positions, which Reagan pretty much dismissed with that statement. Back in the heyday of client/server development, the folks at Borlan...

XML is increasingly being used as the language of data exchange. An XML document based on a DTD or an XML Schema contains data that conforms to a standard structure. A number of technologies, such as ebXML (Electronic Business XML), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integrati...

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown ...

Most applications need upgrades and corrections. If you maintain in-house development you want to be particularly sharp about this. You can't afford to lose knowledgeable people to turnover and be left with no one able to maintain mission-critical applications. So you'll have to find a...

Does your shipping department have these problems? Extra charges due to incorrect addresses? Difficulty tracking packages? How about duplicate entries? If your shipping department is really ancient, you may even have rolls of preprinted UPS shipping labels. Here's how you can seamlessl...

The Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) is now a top-level project at eclipse.org. Originally proposed by Sybase in February 2005, DTP has attracted strong community support and is currently managed by a committee comprised of Sybase, IBM and Actuate. It is an open source initiative desi...

Novalys is holding its 8th annual PowerBuilder Worldwide Survey. This survey is a great feedback mechanism for the entire PowerBuilder community. You'll see how the thousands of responses received in 2007 clearly demonstrate that PowerBuilder projects are increasingly embracing Microso...

Sybase announced that AJAX development capabilities and further Microsoft .NET enhancements have been added to the latest version of Sybase PowerBuilder 11, the premier 4GL rapid application development (RAD) tool. PowerBuilder 11.2 represents another milestone in the PowerBuilder road...

Last week I posted a screen shot of the new 3D Rendering capabilities being added to some of the 3D graphs in PowerBuilder 11.5. It was met with mixed reviews on the PowerBuilder Futures newsgroup (forums.sybase.com) so I went back to the drawing board to see what I could come up with....

BluePhoenix announced that it has expanded its collaboration with Microsoft on legacy modernization projects. The collaboration provides customers moving their applications or databases to .NET-based environments the best in both modernization services and technical support. BluePhoeni...

Sybase has released the production version of its flagship .NET development tool - PowerBuilder version 11.2. This latest release of its premier IDE for RAD includes not only standard fixes but also a good list of new features. Here is the 'Coles Notes' version of these new features.

In June of 2007, Sybase released PowerBuilder 11. PowerBuilder developers can now deploy PowerBuilder components as .NET Assemblies or as .NET Web Services. A PowerBuilder developer can now create these .NET resources so that those who develop .NET solutions can benefit from PowerBuild...

A shortcoming of PocketBuilder 1.x and 2.x has always been the difficulty in accessing Web Services. This shortcoming had always irritated us, but the limitations of the PocketPC and the size of the traditional PowerBuilder approach prevented us from providing an adequate traditional s...

The mouse was the original idea of Doug Engelbart who was the head of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart's philosophy is best embodied, in my opinion, in the design of another device that he invented, the five-finger keyboard - with keys li...

Sybase iAnywhere announced availability of support for Apple iPhone during the first international iPhone Developer Summit, colocated with AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2008 East. Information Anywhere now enables IT organizations to provide secure delivery of Lotus Domino and Microsoft E...

A sign of a vibrant developer community is the active blogosphere that surrounds a technology. Here's a more or less random selection of what's being talked about this month in the PowerBuilder community's blogs. Support for the Data Pipeline in PowerBuilder .NET Windows Forms Targets ...

The release-defining feature of PowerBuilder 11 is its ability to deploy existing applications as .NET Windows Forms and Web Forms applications and components of business logic, namely custom-class user objects (NVOs), as .NET assemblies and Web Services. Although PowerBuilder's adopti...

Application development and maintenance require frequent iterations between design time and runtime. This process is necessarily time-consuming, imprecise, and somewhat frustrating. True, this is a characteristic of RAD environments...but isn't there a better way? Runtime-driven develo...

I received an e-mail from a loyal reader recently complaining that the magazine was no longer 'primarily about PowerBuilder.' The charge is actually true and, despite the title of this column, is not particularly new. In fact, we had an editorial eight years ago explaining part of that...

A sign of a vibrant developer community is the active blogosphere that surrounds a technology. Here's a more or less random selection of what's being talked about this month in the PowerBuilder community's blogs. Specifying Null Values as Retrieval Arguments in the DataWindow Painter -...

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) was founded in 1987 by David Packard. It's located in Moss Landing, California, where its three research ships and two remotely operated vehicles are berthed, giving them immediate access to Monterey Bay. MBARI also operates several ...

With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft is introducing a new document format named 'XML Paper Specification' or XPS. Microsoft describes XPS as follows: 'The XML Paper Specification (XPS) describes the format of a new general-purpose document made available by Microsoft to facilit...

One of the biggest complaints I hear about PowerBuilder is how the applications developed with it end up looking old and outdated. PowerBuilder allows developers to create complicated, robust, and efficient business applications. What it doesn't do is offer an effective presentation. S...

I began my career at RCA Aerospace and Defense in 1983 and worked at MITRE Corp., BAE Systems, and the State of NH. I worked in the defense field performing software configuration management (SCM) and release engineering activities from 1983-1996. In July of 1996, I began working for t...

My seven-year-old daughter thinks that there is a knowledge genie that her teacher 'Googles' for answers. While cute, the anecdote also exemplifies how much Google's obsession with simplicity has helped build brand awareness, making their name literally synonymous with search. I can fo...

At EMI Music Germany, decision makers use detailed business intelligence (BI) analytics to control all sales and marketing activities for new music titles, and to monitor sales success and profitability in real time. To monitor its sales development continuously and respond rapidly whe...

Well, if you listened to Rob Enderle of Enderle Group (www2.sdtimes.com/pdf/SDTimesBackIssues/sdtimes184.pdf) you might think that Rapid Application Development (RAD) is dead or dying. However, I think it's important to distinguish between two different things that are often lumped tog...

A sign of a vibrant developer community is the active blogosphere that surrounds a technology. Here's a more or less random selection of what's being talked about in the PowerBuilder community's blogs recently. A Noob's Thoughts on PowerBuilder - by Rob Little. A month into my first-ev...

PBDJ's readers ask us from time to time what the most popular article in the magazine has been over recent years. We are delighted to report that the answer is that it is one by our very own and much loved editor-in-chief, Bruce Armstrong. We first published it in 2005. Here it is agai...

MBARI has been making the headlines recently as a high-profile JBuilder 2007 Enterprise Edition user. In this Exclusive Q&A with SYS-CON's PowerBuilder Developer's Journal, MBARI Senior Software Engineer Kevin Gomes talks about the role of Eclipse in that decision, about the LiveSource...

Helifix is a market leader in the manufacture of wall ties, fixings and masonry reinforcement and repair systems. The company has 35 employees in its West London headquarters and manufacturing plant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Helifix products are supplied worldwide, with a subsidiary in N...

That isn't, by the way, a Chinese curse. The phrase 'may you live in interesting times' (which became popular after Robert Kennedy used it in a speech in 1966) probably originated from a 1950's science fiction story. Regardless of its roots though, we find ourselves living in such time...

In the adventurous world of software development, we have all come to experience, criticize, and embrace many software lifecycle approaches (e.g., RUP, Agile, Scrum, XP, etc.). At their core, they intend to identify various stages in the software process and optimize their instrumentat...

The rise of Web applications - Web sites that replace the functions of a software program that was traditionally installed on a personal computer - is one of the hottest topics in tech. Huge numbers of Web 2.0 start-ups are competing for user attention and many observers predict the ra...