Latest News from Bruce Armstrong

What Ever Happened to ‘Device Convergence’?

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EDT

I’m sitting here at yet another user group meeting… perhaps you’ve seen me at one or at TechWave, or perhaps you have seen pictures of me at them on Facebook. I’ve got a laptop propped open where I’m usually working on some pet sample code project. Next to it is my iPad in its case/stand with an external keyboard where I’m taking notes on the event for my WordPress blog and perhaps sending out Twitter updates. Next to that is my Android smartphone so I can text message, go on Facebook, and take still photos of the event. And somewhere in the general vicinity is the Panasonic Lumix camera I’m using to record video of the event in case I need to refer to it later to clarify some of the notes I’m taking on the iPad. Finally, if I’m lucky, I’ve got a multi-outlet strip running to a nearby outlet so I can keep all these devices powered up.

Perhaps I Haven’t Made Myself Clear...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:45:00 EDT

I’ve been discussing HTML5 for some time now. In July of 2010, I mentioned that I wasn’t particularly concerned about PowerBuilder supporting HTML5 in the initial PowerBuilder.NET release (12.5) because: “HTML5 is largely still in its infancy, and there appears to be too much opportunity for it to fragment as previous HTML standards have done.” [1] In December of 2010 I devoted an entire editorial to HTML5 [2], noting that: “I have some basic concerns that make me reluctant to recommend using HTML5 as the basis for any line of business application development in the near future.”

User Group Malaise?

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EDT

Read an interesting article about the .NET Developer Association user group in Redmond, Washington. You would think that the user group in Microsoft’s backyard (the meetings are held at Microsoft’s offices) wouldn’t have any problems lining up guest speakers and drawing a crowd. Well, it looks like they do because they’ve had to cancel several recent meetings and have proposed taking a six-month break to try to determine how to revitalize the group.[1] It had me wondering why such a group would have difficulty holding meetings. Of course, the issue may be specific to that particular group. I don’t know enough about the group to judge that. However, assuming that is not the case, the most likely causes would either be (a) a malaise setting in for .NET groups in particular or (b) a lack of interest in software developer tool user group meetings in general. It wouldn’t seem to be an issue with the demand for .NET developers. According to data from indeed.com, it doesn’t look like the demand for them (at least of the C# variety) is diminishing.[2]

PowerBuilder News

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 EST

Sybase announced that its Enterprise Application Server (EAServer) achieved record-breaking price-performance results, beating Oracle and all other application servers on a dual-node configuration in the independent SPECjAppServer benchmark. EAServer was demonstrated to be significantly faster and more cost-effective than Oracle and other vendors, with greater performance and a lower price per standard unit of work.

PowerBuilder News

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST

Sybase and AvantGo, a leading provider of mobile enterprise software, announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for Sybase to acquire AvantGo in a cash merger valued at approximately $38 million.

Perhaps You Can Teach an Old Dog a New Trick Or Two…

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:45:00 EST

Struggling to get familiar with the new PowerBuilder.NET IDE and the technology it allows you to use (e.g., WPF, REST, WCF and the rest of the alphabet soup)? Then you should run, not walk, over to the free eTutorial series that Sybase just made available for PowerBuilder 12.5: http://www.sybase.com/powerbuilder125eTutorial The training was put together by Yakov Werde. Yakov, for those who may not have heard of him, is the managing partner of eLearnIT LLC. Prior to that he spent more than 10 years as a trainer for Sybase, teaching classes on PowerBuilder, Java and .NET. And before that he was a software developer like you and me using PowerBuilder. So he knows of what he speaks. (Yakov is also a regular author for PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal and the ISUG Technical Journal, a member of TeamSybase and a PowerBuilder MVP.)

Creation and Consumption of Web Services with PowerBuilder

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST

PowerBuilder 12.5 introduced a number of significant enhancements to web services support, both for creation and consumption. We’re going to look at what those new features provide and how to use them. We’re also going to look at how we can package some of that functionality so that it can be used from PowerBuilder Classic applications as well. First though, some background. When support for a web service client was first introduced in PowerBuilder 9, it was done based on an open source library called EasySOAP. There were some limitations with that implementation, primarily because the EasySOAP library only supported SOAP 1.1, was limited to XML over HTTP transport, and provided no support for ancillary web services standards such as WS-Security.

How Quickly the Mighty Have Fallen

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:30:00 EST

On November 9, Adobe announced in a blog post[1] that it had decided to cease efforts to develop browser plugins for mobile devices to play Flash, indicating that HTML5 was “the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.” In case that sounds like Adobe abandoned Flash entirely, it should be noted that Adobe indicated their intentions to continue to develop the AIR player for mobile devices, so that the role for Flash on mobile devices would be restricted to native apps, just not browser-based apps. A few days later in another blog post[2], Adobe also noted that it was releasing the entire Flex SDK (used by the Flash Builder IDE to generate Flash RIA applications) to open source, indicating that “In the long-term, we believe HTML5 will be the best technology for enterprise application development.”

PowerBuilder News

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

11/26/02 - Sybase announced a new set of free online resources designed to help companies achieve 'Information Liquidity,' or the efficient transformation of enterprise data into economic value. The Web site is in partnership with and available on Forbes.com and features an interactive Information Liquidity Assessment test that provides an evaluation and next steps to improve the speed, flow, and quality of data within an enterprise.

Silverlight Is Dead, Long Live Silverlight

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:00:00 EST

There’s been a lot of discussion since Microsoft’s BUILD conference on the fate of Silverlight. (Something that is an issue for us because Sybase was originally looking at supporting it for web app development in PowerBuilder 15.) Contrary to what a number of the pundits and would-be pundits have said, I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that Silverlight is dead in Windows 8. I think it’s more accurate to say it’s evolved. As background for those who haven’t been following this closely, Microsoft announced that the Windows 8 operating system would support two kinds of applications: traditional “desktop apps” and the newer “metro style apps.” What would not be available in the Internet Explorer provided with Windows 8 would be support for any plugins, either Silverlight or Flash (see Figure 1).

PowerBuilder News

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EDT

9/10 - Sybase announced the general availability of Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) on the Apple 'Jaguar' Server. With ASE, system implementers will be able to deploy high-performance, scalable, database-driven applications on the Mac platform. Sybase also announced the availability of a free Developer's Edition of ASE, designed to enable developers to build and test ASE solutions.

Welcome to TechWave 2011!

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:00:00 EDT

The more things change, the more they stay the same. There are a lot of changes at TechWave this year, largely due to the somewhat delayed effects of SAP’s acquisition of Sybase. But in many ways, it’s almost a return to the old way of doing them. This will be the first year that TechWave is co-located with a SAP TechEd event. As a result, we’re back in Las Vegas. (SAP TechEd is also being held in Bangalore, Madrid and Beijing, but later in the year.) It also means that it’s being held in mid-September, much later than I can recall any other TechWave being held (in the past they seem to have been in August or even as early as July). In 2009 and 2010, Sybase held TechWave “symposiums” that were less expensive but with a shorter agenda than prior years and consisted almost entirely of Sybase employees as presenters. This year’s agenda (and registration cost) is more reminiscent of the earlier events. In 2008, the event was also held in Las Vegas (at the Mandalay Bay rather than the Venetian), and it also officially started on Tuesday and ran through Friday morning. Also similar to 2008, there are pre-conference courses on Sunday and Monday and the special event is scheduled for Thursday evening. Back in 2008, the combination of the special event the night before and many people having to catch flights out Friday morning resulted in very low attendance at the Friday morning sessions. I expect the same to happen this year.

Say Hello to PowerBuilder 12.5!

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:45:00 EDT

By the time you read this, PowerBuilder 12.5 should be released. Like several “.5” releases before it (i.e., 6.5, 10.5 and 11.5), this release is a major release with a number of significant new features. We’ll have a number of individual articles in PBDJ that will dive into these new features in greater detail. Given the editorial lead time, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve even read a few by the time you read this! For now though, I’d like to give a brief overview of what you’ll see in this new version. Just to show that you haven’t been ignored if you’re still using just PowerBuilder Classic, a number of important new features have been included for that version of the product.

Using a WPF Docking Manager in a PowerBuilder WPF Target

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:02:00 EDT

In a previous PBDJ article, we looked at using a third-party control, a ribbon control in particular, in a PowerBuilder WPF target. One of the other “most requested” features people have asked for is the capability to provide docking windows in their PowerBuilder applications. In this article, we’re going to look at how we can do that in a PowerBuilder WPF application using a third-party docking manager. The particular docking manager I’m going to use is the AvalonDock, an open source project on CodePlex (http://avalondock.codeplex.com/). At the time of this writing, the current version is 1.3.3571. However, that one has some dependencies on Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 libraries. PowerBuilder .NET 12 is based on the Visual Studio 2008 isolated shell, so I’m using an older build (1.1.1509) that doesn’t have these dependencies. First, we’ll add the AvalonDock assembly and a reference to a new WPF application. Create a new WPF window and add the AvalonDock namespace to the Usings property for the new window. I called that new window w_frame, and coded the open event of the application object to open it. I then dropped a DockingManager control onto the window. Next create a menu (I called mine m_menu) and associate that menu with the new window as well.

PowerBuilder – Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:15:00 EDT

As you may be aware, the company I work for does both PowerBuilder and RIA (Flex) application development. We actually create client/server and web-based front ends for the same application. Doing that has really emphasized just how much faster we can do development using PowerBuilder. Of course, we’re originally a PowerBuilder shop, so one could argue we’re faster using PowerBuilder because we know it better. But along comes a thread in the Adobe Flex Developers discussion groups on Linkedin with this heading: “I’m sometimes amazed at how unproductive [modern] development tools are compared to the client/server tools of 20 years ago.”[1] There’s a lot of discussion back and forth, but it seems that a number of other folks chimed in with similar feelings. While the development environment has changed (mobile devices and the web), many of the tasks that are simple to do in a product like PowerBuilder (e.g., formatting a field) require coding, sometimes a great deal of coding, to implement in more “modern” IDEs.

Can PowerBuilder Leverage Mono?

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EDT

If you’ve been following my recent editorials, you’ll know I have some concerns with HTML5 as the silver bullet for all web / mobile development. As a result, I’ve been a proponent of rich GUI applications for both web and mobile. To that end, I’ve been supportive of adding Silverlight as a deployment target for PowerBuilder applications for web support. I also had been hopeful that Silverlight adoption on mobile devices would enable PowerBuilder to deploy to those devices as well. Recent indications are that although Silverlight may end up being a solution for web applications (and may even displace WPF for desktop applications), all indications are that few mobile devices will support it other than perhaps Windows Phone. If we are going to be able to develop for mobile devices with PowerBuilder, and we don’t believe that HTML5 is the only way to do that, what other options might we have?

Some Random Thoughts on Application Development

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:00:00 EDT

I was sort of wondering where application development is headed nowadays. What struck me recently is how long Microsoft has been trying to foster widespread adoption of smartphones and tablet PC devices. They released their first Pocket PC operating system in 2000[1] and the tablet-specific version of the Windows operating system in 2001 (they’d actually released a pen computing version of Windows in 1992!).[2] Yet it wasn’t until Apple released the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010 that those markets really took off, leaving Microsoft in the dust. The race doesn’t always go to the swiftest though. I actually started PC programming on an Apple device (an Apple ][ in the late 70s).[3] However, 4 years after the Apple ][ was released, IBM released their own PC.[4] Because the IBM PC was based on a published specification made available to third-party hardware vendors, the market soon gathered behind the IBM PC and its clones.[5] Today, the more “open” economic ecosystem that could give Apple some stiff competition might be Google Android, but there’s still time for Microsoft to do a repeat performance as well.

Techwave 2011 registration now open

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:42:38 EDT

Techwave 2011 registration now

PowerBuilder Developer Newsletter

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:51:22 EDT

Newsletter from Worldwide Product Support Engineering that contains product announcements, certifica

Q3 2011 PowerBuilder Strategy and Roadmap Webcast

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:35:59 EDT

Date: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 Time: 1:00 – 2:00 pm ET (10:00 – 11:00 am PT) The Q3 2011 P

Upcoming PowerBuilder.TV episodes

Mon, 23 May 2011 12:45:39 EDT

How to let end users customize their applications – Christophe Dufourmantelle June 16th at 11:

Moving Your PowerBuilder Application to the Web

Mon, 23 May 2011 12:30:04 EDT

A new whitepaper from Sybase (SAP) that looks at the various options for moving PowerBuilder applica

Re-investing in PowerBuilder: A Top Down Perspective

Fri, 13 May 2011 12:26:30 EDT

Ali Mehmet, the Technical Director of MARASCIS Ltd, hosts two one-hour webcasts where he shares his

Upcoming PowerBuilder.TV episodes

Mon, 02 May 2011 06:40:10 EDT

Transfer Knowledge of PowerBuilder Code – Christophe Dufourmantelle Tuesday May 10th at 10:00a

Webcast: PowerBuilder 12.5 – Get Ready, ‘Cause Here It Comes!

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 22:05:58 EDT

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. PT) Join PowerBuilder Evan

TechWave 2011 Call for Papers is open

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:15:33 EDT

Apparently they’re going back to the old model, where they hold a call for papers from the use

PowerBuilder Newsletter

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:12:14 EDT

http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1092693

Some PowerBuilder "feature articles"

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:33:20 EDT

Dave’s Corner John’s Roadbox PowerBuilder Product Manager Update

Using the New TableBlob Column Type

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EDT

If you’re familiar with the Database Binary / Text Large Object column type in PowerBuilder Classic (see Figure 1), you know it’s a way of storing blob data associated with an OLE Automation application (Paint, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel) and then displaying it as part of a DataWindow.. There were some limitations with the Database Binary / Text Large Object. It required the end user to have the application that was used to add the object to the database in order to view the data. It often didn’t display the data well within the DataWindow. And it wrapped the data stored in the database with an OLE wrapper, making it difficult to deal with the data outside of the OLE Automation application used to store it.

Upcoming PowerBuilder.TV episodes

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:19:16 EDT

Carving Up Classic Client/Server Applications For .NET Deployment: Using the New .NET Project Partit

Carving Up Classic Client/Server Applications for .NET Deployment Using the New .NET Project Partitioning Feature

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:36:02 EDT

Sponsored by: mLogica The March 12.1 PowerBuilder EBF contains a new tool and technology that enabl

PowerBuilder News

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST

Sybase announced the general availability of its Sybase Communications e-Business Solution (CeBS). It enables communications service providers (CSPs) to leverage the Internet via a pure, Web-based portal that automates the sales, marketing, service, and support business processes.

Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls...

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:15:00 EST

...it tolls for....WPF? That may be the case. In case you haven’t been following, WPF is Windows Presentation Foundation, the next generation method of creating a graphical user interface for Windows-based applications. Why is the bell tolling for it? Well, to explain that, we need to cover a bit of history. WPF 3.0 (there was no 1.0 or 2.0) was released as part of the .NET 3.0 Framework in November of 2006. In December of 2006, Microsoft did a Community Technology Preview (CTP) for what was then called Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E), a subset of WPF intended to run in a browser, later to be called Silverlight. Over time, the two products have differentiated somewhat so that while they are both based on XAML, there are significant incompatibilities between them. [1] There has been great interest in, and much talk about, realigning the two products again so that something developed on one can be more easily ported to the other. Just over a year ago, Microsoft’s Pete Brown as suggesting that “In the future, it is very likely that both Silverlight and WPF will be a single technology with a single codebase.”[2]

Upcoming PowerBuilder.TV episodes

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:30:54 EST

Modernize your PowerBuilder applications – Christophe Dufourmantelle Tuesday March 15th

Webcast: Fun with the PowerBuilder .NET Debugger

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:40:29 EST

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. PT)

eLearnIT interview of John Strano on Youtube

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:30:21 EST

eLearnIT interview of John Strano on

PowerBuilder.NET SCC with TFS

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:18:09 EST

Great post from Reed Shilts on using Microsoft TFS source control system with PowerBuilder.Net

Orange County PowerBuilder.Net Training Event

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:16:46 EST

Hosted by ISUG at the mLogica office February 24th http://my.isug.com/p/cm/ld/fid=201

Upcoming PowerBuilder.TV episodes

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:12:50 EST

How to separate security logic from business logic - Christophe Dufourmantelle Thursday 2/10 at 12:0

Webcast: Customizing XAML Skins for PowerBuilder .NET WPF Applications

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:31:04 EST

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. PT)

PowerBuilder News

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST

Sybase announced that Enterprise Portal 2.0 was voted product leader in the Enterprise Software category in Asia Computer Weekly's Product Leadership readers' survey.

Where Do You Go for PowerBuilder Info?

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:30:00 EST

I’ve had a number of requests from people in the last few days wondering how to get up to speed with more recent versions of PowerBuilder. Their requests are often in the form of: “I’ve been using PowerBuilder since version X (a very early release) and we’re currently on version Y (usually 10.5 or earlier). We want to move to 12.0. How do we catch up with the new features of PowerBuilder?” Usually this is accompanied by a request for information on any books that might be available, or perhaps even a comment that it’s hard to follow some of my more recent articles about 12.1 because it assumes the reader is already somewhat fluent with many .NET concepts. A short time ago, someone also commented in the newsgroups that while they liked Sybase working hard to add improvements to PowerBuilder.NET, they also wanted to see information about the new product, sample code, white papers, instructional videos, etc., pooled together in a single location. So I thought I’d try to address some of those concerns by gathering together all of the knowledge sources I know of and would recommend to learn more about newer versions of PowerBuilder.

TechWave 2011 announced...

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:28:13 EST

Techwave 2011, Las Vegas, USA , September 12 – 16 Sybase announced that TechWave 2011 will be

Some other SVN client options...

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:57:39 EST

I’ve mentioned Unified SCC in the past, and made a reference there to PushOK SVNSCC in additio

Customization Studio

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:49:57 EST

Novalys has released a new product (or perhaps a rebranded newer version of REX) called Customizatio

Calling .NET Components from PowerBuilder

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 06:30:00 EST

I’ve written a number of articles in the past on using .NET components, both visual and non-visual, from a PowerBuilder “Classic” (i.e., Win32) application. Until now, all of them involved using a .NET component that was either provided in the .NET Framework or created using Visual Studio. What changes with PowerBuilder 12 is that we can now write a non-visual component using PowerBuilder.NET, so the solution is entirely PowerBuilder based. Technically, this really first became possible with the introduction of the .NET assembly target in PowerBuilder 11. However, there were a couple of issues with using this approach at that time.

Upcoming PowerBuilder.TV episodes

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:40:20 EST

How to make your application multilingual with Enable 3.5 Thursday January 20that 10:00am EST (New Y

Major upgrade to PBDelta

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 09:20:38 EST

A major upgrade of PBDelta has been released. As part of the major redevelopment PBDelta has been re

PowerBuilder News

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 EST

Sybase announced that it will provide an integrated business information architecture for Covance Inc. using Enterprise Portal and related Sybase products. The system will provide easy and secure access to critical clinical trial data and trial management information - no matter what the source - for clinical research project teams. www.covance.com

To HTML5, or Not to HTML5, That Is the Question

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 11:15:00 EST

If you’ve been following Sybase’s announcements concerning their plans for future versions of PowerBuilder, you’ll know that they are planning for PowerBuilder 15 to be able to generate a Silverlight application and are looking at having it generate applications based on HTML5 as well. If you’ve been following this column, you’ll know I’ve been arguing that we need Silverlight generation much sooner than that. Back in November of 2008[1], I suggested that by the time PowerBuilder 12 was delivered, Microsoft would have Silverlight 3 out and it would be much more stable and ubiquitous. PowerBuilder 12 is here, and Microsoft is actually already on Silverlight 4. According to statowl.com, Silverlight was installed in 20% of browsers in November of 2008 and is now installed in 56% of browsers. Riastats.com indicates that Silverlight 4 is installed in 56% of browsers, and that Silverlight 3 is installed in another 6.5%. The bottom line is that Silverlight is now mainstream technology and the player is already installed in approximately two out of every three browsers. It’s also available on phones based on the Windows Mobile 7 or Symbian operating systems. Finally, there are rumors flying about support for a player on Android and perhaps even iPhone, but nothing definite yet.