powerbuilder
News
PowerBuilder on the iPad?As you may have noticed, a number of media sources are writing about the overall progression of iOS device sales and of the iPad in particular. The latter’s sales have developed to the point where their presence in businesses is becoming indispensable (see Looking into Enterprise iOS by Ian Thain) This article is intended for PowerBuilder users who are considering developing iPad applications. We will try to determine to what point this device has become a must-have, by looking at recent sales and market penetration figures in the professional world. Then, we will discuss development tools and solutions that are adapted to PowerBuilder projects.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 09-May-2012 16:23
PowerBuilder 15 Classic Sneak Preview
In my previous article for PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal (Vol. 18 issue 8), I gave a sneak preview of some of the things we were working on for PB15 Classic. This is a closer look at one of them – Tabs and Docking in MDI Windows. Recall that in the article we mentioned adding two new WindowType values – mdidock! and mdidockhelp! – to the window object. Like values mdi! and mdihelp!, respectively, they allow child windows (sheets) to be opened with the OpenSheet functions. But these sheets will behave differently: they can dock, float and be tabbed like the windows you see in our PB.NET IDE. Your sheets will open docked by default (we will see how to control this later in the article).
powerbuilder developer's journal | 02-May-2012 17:19
What PowerBuilder Users Are Planning for Mobile Development
The first sets of results are in for the Mobile Development Survey. After only a few weeks of release, there have been hundreds of responses from PowerBuilder users. Here’s a little sneak peek at some of the results we’ve compiled so far: The eternal battle between Android and Apple-iOS continues, so which platforms are a must for organizations developing with PowerBuilder? Eighty-seven percent are looking to use Android, with Apple not far behind at 77%. It’s no surprise that the two OS industry leaders are strongly represented in the survey. However, Windows Phone 7, representing only 1.5% of today’s smartphone market sales, has taken a surprising third place. This is in line with the predictions of certain analysts, who see a successful return of Microsoft on the OS mobile market. Only time will tell if these predictions will come true…
powerbuilder developer's journal | 25-Apr-2012 17:57
What Ever Happened to ‘Device Convergence’?
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.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 23-Apr-2012 16:24
SAP's Acquisition of Sybase in 2010 Revisited
I was a long time partner of Sybase and valued their mobile middleware, which I embedded in my mobile business apps for years. The cautions I shared in 2010, were that Sybase did not have a library of mobile apps or a robust SDK at that time, and businesses still needed to figure out how to get mobile apps.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 19-Apr-2012 10:00
SAP Buys US Mobile Platform House Syclo
German giant SAP said Tuesday, after getting back from the long weekend, that it’s going to buy privately held Chicago-based Syclo, a long-established company with a mobile enterprise application platform called Agentry and packaged ERP and CRM apps. Terms weren’t disclosed. The deal should close this quarter. Syclo has expertise in building applications for utilities, oil & gas, life sciences and manufacturing and counts 600 customers around the world. SAP said the acquisition “adds momentum to our already powerful mobile portfolio, advancing our vision and leadership while accelerating our mobile apps.” And where there are mobile apps, there’s a cloud. SAP is on the trail of seeing €20 in total annual revenues by 2015 versus €14.2 billion last year tickled by mobile solutions.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 16-Apr-2012 13:00
QweryBuilder Tips and Tricks
QweryBuilder contains some very neat features. We try our best to ensure that most functionality is well exposed and intuitive to find; In some cases this is hard to do. Below are a few that we think you will find useful. Use the Ctrl-D keyboard shortcut to duplicate the current line. If text is selected, the selected text will be duplicated. Use the Ctrl-T keyboard shortcut to swap the current Werysoft Inc.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04726066291902301395noreply@blogger.com0
powerbuilder developer's journal | 12-Apr-2012 02:00
Perhaps I Haven’t Made Myself Clear...
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.”
powerbuilder developer's journal | 11-Apr-2012 18:40
Best Way to Grow Enterprise Mobility In-House
Taking a stance of 'Build it and they will come' has never worked in IT and especially now with the Consumerisation of Mobility and the Prosumers (Professional + Consumer) in your Enterprise, whom are expecting or even demanding the same experience as Mobile Apps on the App Stores/Markets. These employees have been covertly educated to expect the best mobility experience and are now turning their thoughts to solutions in their daily tasks, on the go! Just look at the best ranking mobile apps within the App Stores/Markets and the Apps that are being acquired for large sums of money… they would have all done their homework to ensure maximum effect and this is now the target where Enterprise Mobility is expected to shoot for! In-House Mobile Application Development is the key going forward for the Enterprise and many companies nowadays have a Chief Mobility Office (CMoO). It is the CMoO's top responsibility to Co-ordinate Mobility Trends and Directions, reducing any wasted time and effort and ultimately empowering the Enterprise with the benefits of mobility that I have mentioned in previous articles, such as streamlining business processes, rapid response, ultimately gaining a competitive advantage.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 11-Apr-2012 14:00
TechWave into TechEd Does Go!!!
I just received an interesting piece of information today from the Events team. Let me share it with you... For 2012, our traditional TechWave content will be incorporated into the SAP TechEd conference, taking place October 15-19 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. We will continue to deliver targeted training on Sybase products as you would expect, plus offer attendees access to SAP TechEd keynote sessions, exhibits, special event and other networking functions.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 11-Apr-2012 13:45
Five Points When Building the Business Case for Mobile Enterprise Apps
Today I thought I would put together five steps and five points within to producing 5-Star Mobile Apps. Here is #1 Five points when Building the Business Case for Mobile Enterprise Apps. 1. Create a Visionary Plan for more mobile Apps and know how they will aid and shape your enterprise. 2. Create an ADS (Application Definition Statement) for each App, specifying purpose and intended audience. 3. Create a Budget for devices, if CYOD and include the next two steps. Also include your estimated ROI. 4. Create a plan for a Device Management & Security Infrastructure - Use a leading MDM such as Afaria. 5. Create a plan for an App Dev Team using a future proof Development Platform - Use a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP), such as SUP.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 06-Apr-2012 13:45
PowerBuilder Mobile
Are you a PowerBuilder developer and is your organization considering developing Mobile applications? Then your help is needed! Who is going mobile? Discover what PowerBuilder Projects are working on. Did you know that 70 million tablets were sold this year? By 2015, it is predicted tablet sales will surpass PC sales! A lot of PowerBuilder projects are preparing for this evolution ... Are you?
powerbuilder developer's journal | 26-Mar-2012 02:39
Data Connection and Usage, the Life Blood of Mobility
Now that Mobility is part of our lives, we are all hooked on our Smartphone or Tablet device and take them everywhere we go, but we need to be aware of something that we almost take for granted… Data Connection & Usage! Especially if we are going abroad and hit the tricky subject of Data Roaming, which can become a very expensive situation personally and corporately. Mobile devices give us access to fantastic content that can be delivered and displayed to our Converged Mobile Devices (CMD's). In the past the Cellular Providers made their money on calls and SMS, but for a while now their new cash cow is data and we are hooked!
powerbuilder developer's journal | 24-Mar-2012 18:00
User Group Malaise?
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 developer's journal | 22-Mar-2012 19:46
Appeon Version 6.5.1 Released!
New Supported PowerBuilder Features Support the encoding argument for DataWindow SaveAs function and File functions. Support CSV file type for ImportFile function. Support more Section 508 properties: AccessibleName, AccessibleDescription, & AccessibleRole properties of PB controls Inet object supports https address (this feature is available in Appeon only, not in PB)
powerbuilder developer's journal | 22-Mar-2012 04:22
Tablets Have Come of Age
This week I attended a Mobile Monday event sponsored by Barnes & Nobile (B & N) which discussed Tablet Computing and promoted their Nook Developer program. The Chair for the meeting was Marek Pawlowski, Founder and Organiser MEX @marekpawlowski and the Panel consisted of Claudio Romanini - Director, Developer Relations, Barnes & Noble (B&N), Stuart Dredge - Freelance Journalist @stuartdredge, Hesham Al-Jehani - Product Manager, Mobile , Comscore and Ben Scott Robinson- creative director, We Love Mobile @bscr. This article is a combination of notes from the meeting and my thoughts.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 21-Mar-2012 14:30
Why Your Wireless Expert Could Be Your Mobility Team MVP
It may be an unusual angle, but your Enterprise IP Wireless Expert may be your best ally around when it comes to implementing your Mobile Device Security Strategies. The reason why I think this is that all of smartphone and tablet devices support wireless connectivity, and most data plans provide incentives for users to access the web via IP connectivity rather than the carrier’s network. Hopefully this makes sense as it reduces airtime charges for users, often with little or no trade-off in performance and flexibility and relieves congestion in the carrier voice network. So it's a Win-Win situaton, right? Well... what users (and some mobility professionals) might overlook, however, is that a lot of the networks over which Enterprise Mobile Devices might connect to the web are completely unsecured, and that could be very dangerous.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 17-Mar-2012 16:00
The Importance of Future Proofing Mobility
I have talked a lot about the need to Mobilize Existing Business Systems and Processes in an innovative and strategic way and at the heart of this for Mobile App development is the Mobile Enterprise Application Platform or MEAP. This is important because mobile technology is evolving so rapidly. Companies need to be in position to take advantages of new innovations as they come to market. The world is increasingly unforgiving of those who fail to keep up, as I have said before... Don't be left in the Starting Blocks! There is a lot of competitive advantage in Mobility and you need to invest in your vision to reap the reward! You need to also build a Business Mobility Infrastructure that is capable of accommodating new mobile technologies. You might say, but with all the advances that we’ve seen in the past couple of years, with so many new models of smartphones, and now tablets, what more can there really be? How many ways can device manufactures package a Converged Mobile Device (CMD - I'm bundling both smartphone and tablets here)? You're probably asking...Isn’t all this mobility frenzy going to settle down?
powerbuilder developer's journal | 13-Mar-2012 15:00
Rapid Deployment Solutions for Mobile
At Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, I had the great fortune to interview... Hari Subramanyam, Global Rollout Manager, RDS Mobile Solutions Assembly & Packaging, SAP. In this interview I find out... What SAP offers for customers to get started with mobile solutions. What is currently available today. What rapid deployment solutions are being planned for the future
powerbuilder developer's journal | 10-Mar-2012 14:00
Appeon Mobile: First-Ever Mobility Solution for the PowerBuilder Community
Novalys SAS announced on March 7, 2012 that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Appeon Corporation to distribute the first-ever mobility solution for the PowerBuilder community. Leveraging Appeon’s over a decade of experience in PowerBuilder web deployment and its core technology platform, Appeon is developing a mobile deployment solution for PowerBuilder – Appeon Mobile. Appeon Mobile will offer the simplest, fastest, and lowest-cost mobile development option for the PowerBuilder developer community. Under the agreement, Novalys will market, sell, and support Appeon Mobile worldwide.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 09-Mar-2012 11:30
A Snap-In App Framework Using Dynamic PowerBuilder Assemblies (Part 2)
This two-part series examines and contrasts PowerBuilder .NET 12.5.1’s new dynamic assembly feature with corresponding dynamic library functionality in PowerBuilder Classic. The discourse is presented in the context of a simplified yet practical use case. Part 1 presented the use case, reviewed pertinent PowerBuilder Classic dynamic APIs and presented a Classic PBD implementation. Part 2 introduces PowerBuilder .NET 12.5.1’s Dynamic Assembly feature, reveals relevant PowerBuilder .NET generated assembly internals, and presents a PowerBuilder .NET use case implementation. Along the way it explores PowerBuilder assembly internals. My initial attack plan when exploring version 12.5.1’s dynamic assembly function capabilities was to envision a use case where library functions are used to reflect on an assembly to discover its contents and then extract and instantiate class definitions. I am so used to writing dynamic Classic PowerScript code using Library functions to get lists of objects in a PBD and dynamically creating them that I naively assumed that the .NET Library methods were equivalent to their Classic counterparts. Wrong! As you’ll soon see, my journey took me spelunking deep into the cavities of PowerBuilder .NET assemblies. Lucky for me I got the treasure at the bottom of the cave and was able find my way back out. Read on!
powerbuilder developer's journal | 08-Mar-2012 19:54
Novalys and Appeon Partner to Distribute Appeon Mobile Worldwide
Novalys SAS announced on Wednesday it has entered into a strategic partnership with Appeon Corporation to distribute the first-ever mobility solution for the Sybase PowerBuilder community. Leveraging Appeon’s decade of experience in PowerBuilder deployment and its core technology platform, Appeon will develop a mobile deployment solution for PowerBuilder – Appeon Mobile. Appeon Mobile will offer the simplest, fastest, and lowest-cost mobile development option for the PowerBuilder developer community. Under the agreement, Novalys will market, sell, and support Appeon Mobile worldwide. In response to growing demand from the PowerBuilder community for mobility, Appeon Mobile will enable developers to rapidly build mobile applications exclusively with the Sybase PowerBuilder and using only existing programming skills. This empowers developers to leverage existing investments in PowerBuilder and the unbeatable productivity that PowerBuilder offers. For example, line-of-business mobile applications can be built in just weeks instead of months. Moreover, it will no longer be necessary to use different tools, programming skills, and build multiple projects for each platform, such as Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 07-Mar-2012 16:22
SAP Executive Interview with Raj Nathan
At Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, I had the great fortune to interview...Raj Nathan, EVP and CMO, Sybase, an SAP company. As Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Worldwide Marketing and Business Solutions Operations, Dr. Raj Nathan is responsible for all marketing initiatives for Sybase and its subsidiaries, Sybase iAnywhere and Sybase 365. In this role, Dr. Nathan leads a global marketing organization setting Sybase's technology direction and go-to-market initiatives. Under his leadership, Sybase continues to be recognized for visionary technology that meets the direct needs of customers and partners. Dr. Nathan’s work experience has taken him around the globe, and has run the gamut from hardware to software, and from large companies to small including Unisys and Siemens Pyramid. Raj earned his doctorate and master’s degree from Iowa State University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Madras, in India.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 07-Mar-2012 10:45
SAP and Samsung Partnership
At Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, I had the great fortune to interview Oliver Bussmann, CIO at SAP and BC Cho, Head of Global Enterprise Business Team, Mobile Communications - Samsung Electronics. In this interview I find out... What Oliver Bussmann thought the main trends were at this years MWC? What was the news about Samsung and SAP?
powerbuilder developer's journal | 05-Mar-2012 15:55
Building a Snap-In App Framework Using Dynamic PowerBuilder Assemblies
The articles in this two-part series examine and contrast PowerBuilder .NET 12.5.1’s new dynamic assembly feature with corresponding dynamic library functionality in PowerBuilder Classic. The discourse is presented in the context of a simplified yet practical use case. The first article presents the use case, reviews pertinent PowerBuilder Classic dynamic APIs, and presents a Classic PBD implementation. The second article introduces PowerBuilder .NET 12.5.1’s Dynamic Assembly feature, reveals relevant PowerBuilder .NET generated assembly internals, and presents a PowerBuilder .NET use case implementation. Say you were on a programming team designing a PowerBuilder .NET WPF based system that included this requirement.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 02-Mar-2012 19:57
The PowerBuilder DataWindow as an Image Thumbnail Display Control
While external controls exist for viewing image thumbnails, there can be the need to view images as thumbnails within the context of other data within a multi-row list, treeview or report. This can be easily done with a PowerBuilder DataWindow object. In this case a treeview DataWindow (see Figure 1) was needed to display multiple images as thumbnails that related to the data presented in each row. Required functionalities include making the images selectable, displaying data for each thumbnail, such as the name of the file, and to keep the appearance orderly by having the images appear the same height in a row. I will present the techniques used to create thumbnail images in DataWindows. The methods presented assume that the images are stored as files in some folder that’s accessible by the application. It’s also assumed that the image types are any of the standard image types that are recognized by PowerBuilder: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .wmf, and .png. The image files are not converted in any way but are displayed in a thumbnail size.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 01-Mar-2012 22:11
Breaking Platform Limitations
One of the innovative new features in the PowerBuilder 12.5.1 release is its ability to deploy PowerBuilder .NET code to run in 64-bit mode on 64-bit Windows platforms. In this article, after gaining background and perspective on 32- and 64-bit memory management and .NET deployment models, you’ll explore the internals, strengths and limitations of this new feature. Almost all current server, desktop and notebook hardware platforms have 64-bit processors. Almost all current versions of Windows operating systems support both 32- and 64-bit platforms. With the 12.5.1 release, some PowerBuilder application software will be able to take full advantage of all available system memory. Read on to see if your code is a candidate for instant memory expansion. 32-bit OS’ can access a theoretical maximum 4 GB of RAM. In practice however, 32-bit Windows employs a 4-GB tuning model in which an application gets only 2 GB of virtual memory while the remaining 2 GB are assigned to the OS kernel. So the realistic maximum application memory is limited to 2GB. This limitation can only be released if the application was compiled with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE option and the /3GB switch is set. In this situation, the application can get up to 3 GB of memory. (See PowerBuilder documentation on how to make the compiler large memory aware if you run out of memory when compiling your application.) PowerBuilder applications, not being large address aware, are therefore limited to 2GB RAM.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 01-Mar-2012 16:19
Take PB to the Web, Mobile & More!
Your client/server applications work well, and you have invested a lot in them but you need to keep up with the times and move your applications to the Web. So you may wonder “What should we do? Do we really need to junk our existing applications? Retrain our developers? Hire new guys who know nothing about our business?”
powerbuilder developer's journal | 01-Mar-2012 10:45
PowerBuilder News
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 developer's journal | 01-Mar-2012 06:00
Sybase 365 Next Generation Mobile Commerce Platform
Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc., announced on Tuesday the release of its next generation Mobile Commerce platform, making it the most complete mobile commerce offering on the market for mobile banking, mobile payments and mobile money services for both developed and emerging markets. The next generation platform enhances the customer engagement experience that financial institutions and mobile operators can offer their end-users, by providing a complete set of rich features for mobile banking, mobile payments and mobile money services – on a single platform. For financial institutions, the Sybase® mobile commerce platform enables banks to extend their relationship to both the retail and business customer through the mobile channel, and to create new services and improve customer loyalty. The rich set of mobile payment functionality supports mobile payments services that enable consumers to use their mobile devices to pay for real-world goods and services. This latest release adds mobile money capability to the platform for branchless banking, enabling financial institutions and operators to run financial inclusion services for the unbanked and under banked, turning the consumers mobile into a branch-in-their-pocket.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 28-Feb-2012 08:00
Debugger Beta for Oracle in QweryBuilder
We finally finished implementing a debugger for Oracle in QweryBuilder. It was setup to work very similar to how the debuggers for Sybase ASE and SQL Anywhere work. In order to make sure we didn't miss anything important, we need people to beta test it for us. If you're interested in trying it out, you can download 7.3.0 Beta http://www.werysoft.com/downloader.aspx?file=Werysoft Inc.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04726066291902301395noreply@blogger.com0
powerbuilder developer's journal | 26-Feb-2012 09:00
PFC Project Partitioning Using a Referenced PowerBuilder Assembly Target
Paul Harvey, the great American radio personality, would always conclude his colorful broadcasts with the quip “And now you know the rest of the story.” For those of you not acquainted with Paul’s broadcasts, here’s a sample. If you get to about 3:40 in, you’ll hear the classic remark. Paraphrasing Paul’s tag line, in this article you’ll learn “the rest of the story” about RAD Development methodology in PowerBuilder 12.5 .NET using a Referenced PB Assembly Target. I’ll explain the technique and implementation steps using the open source PEAT PFC demo application. In a previous PBDJ article, “Slicing the Pie with PowerBuilder .NET 12.1 EBF Project Partitioning” (http://yakovwerde.ulitzer.com/node/1740373 ), I wrote about achieving Classic RAD-like build/test speeds in .NET WPF applications by configuring the Project object partitioning feature. This feature lets you logically carve up a large application into a small manageable-sized executable with a set of related PowerBuilder assemblies that are automatically generated at full build-time via the Project Object. Although, once configured, you can benefit from RAD speed incremental compiles when making changes to your non-framework code, this approach has several disadvantages. First, it can take a lot of developer time, knowledge of the application and several trial and error attempts to configure the feature. Second, since both the framework and the concrete application are in the same target, an inadvertent save to a framework object will cause a full build on the entire application to occur. Third, a flaw in the incremental compile process causes a bunch of meaningless compiler errors to be reported when changing code in a visual object. The only way to clear the situation is by doing a full build (thereby giving up all compile time advantages).
powerbuilder developer's journal | 15-Feb-2012 20:40
Mobility in Business Is Now a Necessity!
If you have been reading my articles and blogs you will know that I am a staunch believer that the iPad is the Corporate Mobility game changer and enabler for the future and the Future of Mobility is NOW! I totally believe that the Mobile device is a tool for the future worker that can be unlocked with the forward thinking and design of bespoke business apps. Having a Mobile Device and never building Corporate Apps is like having a Swiss Army Knife on a Survival Trip and never using it.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 03-Feb-2012 19:49
Advanced DataWindow Sorting
This article provides a means of automating the sorting of DataWindows... not just grid DataWindows as discussed in last month’s article, but all DataWindows, regardless of display format. Bear in mind that we are writing programmer tools. When writing for programmers we want to give the programmer the maximum number of options while minimizing the programmer effort. In other words, default as much as possible but allow the programmer to move beyond the defaults. It would be nice to be able to save searches and reload them but we will save that for the next article.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 01-Feb-2012 21:07
PowerBuilder News
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.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 01-Feb-2012 06:00
Traveling Light with iOS
The world is becoming a mobile place and even if you are not a mobile worker in your daily job, you will want to interact while on the move, in your personal life. That is why the Smartphone, iPad or Converged Mobile Device as I like to call it, is a great success... It gives you access to everything you want in the palm or your hand. Some may say that tablet devices will become our day-to-day third device along with the laptop and the mobile and I would partially agree with that statement providing one thing...The Laptop is the new Desktop and the Tablet is the new King of Mobile Computing. I use my iPad whenever I travel as a replacement to my MacBook Pro, for presentations, document creation, spreadsheets, email, etc. It is such a delight now to travel light with such a powerful and mobile device. Take it from someone that has 10 years of business travel under his belt, mostly with heavyweight Windows Laptops. So what I decided to do in this article was to list the reasons why I think the tablet devices are becoming hot stuff and making laptops less attractive to leave the confines of the home and office. In fact this article along with others was created totally 'on the go' with my mobile workhorse iPad.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 31-Jan-2012 18:04
NFC and iOS: Will It Become a Reality in 2012?
Lately there has been a lot of rumor on the web about the iPhone 5 and iPad 3. One thing that most people and technical loggers seem to agree on, along with more internal memory for running of programs and a faster processor is a thinner design and new innovative features such as the use of NFC (Near Field Communication). Yes still speculation until the time the next iPhone will be announced, which will probably be in June at Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference), but worth talking about in advance. As a quick example of NFC, think of something many thousands of us use daily, the London Undergrounds successful use of the Oyster card and beyond that card payments , such as Barclaycard's Contactless Payment systems.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 31-Jan-2012 15:34
Looking into Enterprise iOS
Enterprise Mobility has a lot of benefits, such as improving the efficiency of a company's business processes and their Information Workers alike. If the term Information Workers is new to you, then a brief explanation is that they are traditional employees using corporate data in their day to day tasks, historically they were chained to the desktop. Now they are free and can become mobile. This mobile enablement gives a competitive edge to a company and a leading position, using such a forward thinking initiative. I travel into the City of London every day and have noticed more and more over the last few years the iPhone becoming visibly the 'weapon of choice' of the city worker, rather than having two devices, one the corporate Blackberry and the other the personal iPhone. A lot of companies are allowing their worker to bring their personally owned iPhones into a corporate plan, where the data and voice charges are taken care of by the company after the employee agrees to a usage policy (BYOD). Also I am seeing the chose your own device (CYOD) policy being lead by the Prosumers in the company choosing iOS. In the last half of 2010 I noticed a trend emerging of corporate iPad use, culminating one evening in my train carriage of four commuters within meters of each other, using email, games, Numbers and Pages on their iPads. Since then this has increased massively and become the majority in 2011 and it's my opinion that it will continue in 2012!
powerbuilder developer's journal | 30-Jan-2012 16:50
Perhaps You Can Teach an Old Dog a New Trick Or Two…
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.)
powerbuilder developer's journal | 26-Jan-2012 19:09
Creation and Consumption of Web Services with PowerBuilder
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.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 18-Jan-2012 19:09
PowerBuilderTV Celebrates Two Years of Webinars
With a varied range of subjects from Taking PowerBuilder to the Cloud, to Adding Single Sign-On to PowerBuilder Applications, we have been working to keep the community up-to-date on PowerBuilder tips and tools. As our two year anniversary approaches, we’d like to share with you a little insight into how things are going so far. We’ve had great contributions from the PowerBuilder community including some prominent community members such as Dave Fish and John Strano, among many others, and so it’s no surprise that PBTV has had more than 5 000 registrations in 2011. Over the past two years, PBTV has worked to make information on PowerBuilder more accessible to a growing and increasingly diverse audience, with broadcasts in three different languages: English, Spanish and French.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 17-Jan-2012 18:08
Drop-Down Lists for Decimal Fields
PowerBuilder has a very handy way to make data entry more convenient: the DropDownDataWindow and DropDownListBox edit styles for DataWindow columns. Indeed, it’s much simpler to pick up a value from a look-up list than to type it in each time you need to enter it. However, it looks like we’ve overlooked one of the cases when use of a drop-down list can make data entry easier for the user. Most of the time we use drop-down lists when working with lists of pairs “encoded value”/”decoded value”: the users see and select decoded values and encoded values are saved in the database. The data type of the columns for which we use drop-down lists in such cases may be either string or integer, but it doesn’t make any difference in terms of defining the edit style. Another instance when drop-down lists come in handy is when there is a predefined list of all possible values that can be entered into a column; in this case the entered values shouldn’t even necessarily be encoded and may be stored in the database as is. In this article I will show you how drop-down lists can be used for an altogether different purpose – the entry of special values, and what you should take into consideration when using drop-down lists for DataWindow decimal columns.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 12-Jan-2012 16:38
DataWindow Sorting with Column Headers
This article describes how to create a grid presentation window that allows sorting by clicking on the column header. To begin we need to create a grid DataWindow. I’m selecting just few columns from the employee table. Here is my sql for the DataWindow in Figure 1. Once we have created it I get the DataWindow painter shown in Figure 2. There are several changes that we need to make. Let’s change the status column so it’s no longer a set of radio buttons. This is a read-only screen so let’s remove the status and add a computed field. To do this let’s remove the Status column altogether. Then add a computed field in its place.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 11-Jan-2012 20:26
How Quickly the Mighty Have Fallen
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 developer's journal | 09-Jan-2012 19:46
PowerBuilder News
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.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 01-Jan-2012 06:00
The Mobile Business Object... Your Mobile Way Forward
As you probably know the Mobile Business Object (MBO) is at the heart of Sybase's UnWired Platform, which is a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform used in turn as part of the SAP Mobility Platform. Once defined the MBO can be used in Native (such as iOS) as well as Hybrid Web Container Applications. It can be described in four points. Defines the data you want to use from your backend system and exposes it to be used for your mobile application /workflow. Created using our simple, graphical tooling inside the Eclipse development environment. Re-usable, allowing you to leverage across multiple device types. Future proofing of your application, when new device types are added your same MBO can be used.
powerbuilder developer's journal | 14-Dec-2011 15:43