Sybase, Inc., on Monday announced the availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 12.5, the second .NET release of Sybase's award-winning rapid application development tool. PowerBuilder 12.5 empowers developers with the easiest, fastest and most cost-effective solution for creating modern and visually appealing business applications on the Microsoft Windows 32 ((Win32)and .NET Frameworks. Today's announcement was made at Sybase TechWave, collocated with SAP TechEd 2011 and being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from September 12-16.

"Sybase PowerBuilder has remained throughout the years a bastion of application development productivity for a wide class of enterprise applications that combine heavy database orientation with a highly productive graphical user interface (GUI)," said Al Hilwa, program director for IDC's Application Development Software research. "The direction that PowerBuilder has taken to become a seamless Windows .NET environment with the Visual Studio shell incorporated into its infrastructure has meant that the product can now be considered equally for evolving existing systems and for developing new ones for traditional Windows 32 environments and for .NET."

PowerBuilder's patented DataWindow technology continues to be the fastest and easiest component in the industry for building data access in an application. PowerBuilder 12.5 extends the functionality and ease of the DataWindow with updates to the WPF version, as well as the Win32 version. The new version also adds functionality allowing developers to build Custom Visual User Objects (CVUOs) that encapsulate the DataWindow and deploy them in any .NET application. PowerBuilder developers now can share the DataWindow's productivity by making it available as a component for use in other .NET development environments to solve the most complex business logic challenges.

Sybase PowerBuilder 12.5 also brings new features for Win32 applications, giving developers options to evolve applications in Win32, create applications in .NET WPF or a combination of both, or migrate applications from Win32 to .NET-all in the PowerBuilder platform, while protecting their application investment. PowerBuilder remains the only product that allows customers to leverage their existing Win32 code and seamlessly migrate to the .NET Framework within the PowerBuilder platform, saving the expense and complexities of re-writing.

"We have been using PowerBuilder since 1997 to build and maintain business critical financial planning applications that require a reliable platform," said Dimitri Joosten, Analyst Programmer at Van Havermaet Groenweghe. "PowerBuilder continues to be the only development platform that provides us the ease of use and functionality in a proven, stable platform with support for stunning graphical user interfaces that impress our users and allows us to focus on solving business problems on time and on budget."

PowerBuilder ships with two Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) providing  a choice of development options. Developers can build and deploy applications in a traditional Client/Server architecture, deploy to WebForms, WindowsForms, or Smart Client applications. Users can also develop modern WPF applications by leveraging the new IDE built on top of PowerBuilder's 2010 Visual Studio Isolated Shell and .NET 4.0. Developers can also choose to combine the two options in a hybrid approach.

Key new PowerBuilder 12.5 features and benefits include:

• New PowerBuilder Deployment Targets
  • WCF Services - used to create Web services using the WCF model
  • Support for CVUOs in .NET assemblies - enables PowerBuilder customers to share the productivity of the DataWindow with .NET developer peers
  • PowerBuilder .NET assembly - used to create a PowerBuilder .NET target, then reference it in another PowerBuilder .NET project, without exposing the source code behind it
• REST Client - PowerBuilder .NET targets can be clients that consume RESTful (Representational State Transfer) Web Services
• DataWindow Enhancements for Win32
  • AutoWidth Column for the grid style
  • Support for RTF, images, and user-drawn controls
  • ADO .NET connection - to share datasources with .NET applications
• Batch Command Processing - enables customers to run a batch file to build applications without any user intervention
• Multithreading Support - implemented through Shared Objects in PowerBuilder .NET

PowerBuilder 12.5 is currently available. For additional information about PowerBuilder 12.5, visit: www.sybase.com/powerbuilder.