Bruce Armstrong

One of the things that PowerBuilder developers have been asking for years is the ability to include state-of-the-art graphic elements in their applications. With the advent of WPF Targets in PowerBuilder.NET 12.0, that capability has finally arrived. You can do quite a bit with the new layout managers, the skinning capabilities, effects, etc., directly within the IDE. For example, look at the following few lines of XAML code. The highlighted code is what I added; the rest was generated automatically by PowerBuilder.NET when I placed the commandbutton on the WPF window. more)

SAP/Sybase joint strategy and product innovations webcast

On August 19, 2010, SAP and Sybase business leaders will unveil their joint strategy and product innovations for customers in enterprise mobility, business analytics, and enterprise information management at a press briefing in Boston, MA, and Frankfurt, Germany from 10:00 – 11:15 a.m. EDT. http://www.sap.com/about/newsroom/index.epx ... (more)

Twenty-Four Reasons To Consider PowerBuilder 12

PowerBuilder 12 has been released.  The new version represents a huge leap forward as far as support for .Net development, particularly reflected by the introduction of a new .Net IDE based on the Visual Studio Isolated Shell.  That doesn't mean that people who aren't doing .Net development with PowerBuilder (the people doing "classic" development) have been left out.  There are also a number of enhancements in the "Classic" 32 bit IDE as well.  We'll cover some of those first. Classic IDE Enhancements 1.        Support for Windows 7.  Officially, the release notes indicate sup... (more)

How Might Entity Framework Affect Us?

If you've been following the product direction for PowerBuilder for the last few releases, and particularly with respect to the upcoming PowerBuilder 12, you know that PowerBuilder is evolving into a .NET development tool. As PowerBuilder developers, you'll also know that the key strengths of the product are its productivity through Rapid Application Development (RAD), support for object-oriented programming (OOP), and simplified data access and update through the DataWindow. That last item, the DataWindow, has served us well. No other control out there gives us the same capabil... (more)

Are We Headed in the Right Direction?

Sybase is currently in the middle of the most aggressive marketing program that I've seen for PowerBuilder in recent history. If you've been following my blog (and if you haven't you should) you'll know that Sybase recently ran a four-page ad in Visual Studio magazine promoting the release of PowerBuilder 12 (http://xrl.us/bhmxfe). They've also been conducting a worldwide series of "Developer Days" promoting PowerBuilder 12 and a number of other Sybase products. One of the things they show during that road show is a rather tentative "road map" of which features are planned for fu... (more)