Support for the Data Pipeline in PowerBuilder .NET Windows Forms Targets

Do you use Data pipelines in your applications? If so you should know that PowerBuilder 11.1 supports the use of the Data Pipeline in .NET Windows Forms targets.

You need to deploy a new DLL, pbdpl110.dll, with your applications if they use pipelines. This DLL must be deployed with both .NET Windows Forms and standard PowerBuilder Win32 applications.

The pbdpl110.dll has been added to the Runtime Packager.

I'm leaving for Europe today so my posts may be a bit erratic this week, depending on my schedule and Internet access. Stay tuned for more information about new PowerBuilder 11.1 features.

PowerBuilder 11 Webcasts

Sign up today for the PowerBuilder 11 Webcast series. These interactive webcasts, each 60 minutes long, will cover the following topics:

• 
  PB 11 Overview - November 20th with Jim O’Neil
• 
  Windows Forms and Interop - December 11th with Jim O’Neil
• 
  Web Forms - December 11th with Dave Fish
• 
  Smart Client - January 15th with John Strano
• 
  Web Services Deployment - January 29th 2008 with Dave Fish
• 
  Web Services DataWindow - February 5th 2008 with Dave Avera

This is also a great opportunity to have your questions answered by PowerBuilder experts, either online during the webcast, or during a live question and answer session at the end of each presentation.

For more information, and the registration form, click here.

Specifying Null Values as Retrieval Arguments in the DataWindow Painter

Some of you have been asking for this enhancement for a long time now. Well its finally here (in version 11.1). You can now have a null value for a retrieval argument in the DataWindow painter.

Just tick the Null check box for any argument where you want the value to be null. If you type in a value, the check box will be cleared.

This enhancement, and several others in PowerBuilder 11 came through the ISUG enhancement request system. Anyone can enter an enhancement request, but only ISUG members can vote. ISUG Memberships are available for as little as US $20, so check it out.

http://www.isug.com/common/EnhancementsProcess.html

Database Driver Enhancements in PowerBuilder 11.1

There are some database driver enhancements in version 11.1. If you are using Informix® 10, Oracle® 10g, or Sybase ASE® 15, read on:

Informix 10 Support:

•The I10 interface supports ANSI/DBCS and Unicode databases

•The I10 interface supports Informix long object names with up to 128 characters

•With IDS 9.2.1 and later, you can change the name of an index in the Database painter when you are connected using the I10 interface

•SQL Statement Caching is Supported

•Creating and dropping indexes without locking

•Column-level encryption is supported

•Using multiple OUT parameters in user-defined routines is supported

Oracle Driver Enhancements:

•Statement caching in Oracle 10g provides and manages a cache of statements for each session

•To set the maximum size of the statement cache, set the StatementCache DBParm to the number of statements you want to cache

–0 (Default) means caching is disabled

•This option is available only in the O10 database interface

Sybase ASE 15 Driver Enhancements:

•In Adaptive Server Enterprise 15.0 and later, you can use the following datatypes as identity columns:

–bigint, int, numeric, smallint, tinyint, unsigned bigint, unsigned int, and unsigned smallint

•This support has been added to both the ASE (introduced in 11.0) and SYC database interfaces

European Events

I'm packing my bags for another trip to Europe. There will be some PowerBuilder 11.1 presentations next week in Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, and Brussels.

The Frankfurt event will be on the 13th of November at the Sybase office.

The Dusseldorf event will be on the 14th of November at the Sybase office.

In Brussels I will be presenting at the Sybase Symposium on the 15th of November.

If you are interested in attending the events in Frankfurt or Dusseldorf, please send an email to europepb@sybase.com

If you would like to learn more about the Sybase Symposium in Brussels, click here.

All of these events are free. Just let us know that you will be attending so we can order enough food. We wouldn't want you to go hungry!

I'll be racking up the frequent flier miles as I'll come back home for Thanksgiving and then turn around and head back to Europe at the end of this month for some more events. Here is what is happening:

Tuesday, November 27th - Swiss User Group presentation (including hands on training). Click here for more information.

Wednesday, November 28th - Dutch User Group. Details are still being finalized and I'll post the information here when it becomes available, but mark your calendars.

Thursday, November 29th - STUN TechSelect 2007 in London. You can get more information here.

So there are plenty of opportunities for our European customers to learn more about PowerBuilder 11.1 as well as the road map for 11.2, 11.5 and 12 in the next few weeks. If you can't make it one of the European events, don't despair, we will be holding a series of webcasts beginning later this month, each one covering a different aspect of PowerBuilder 11. I'll post the details here as soon as they become available.

Happy Developing!

New Web Form Controls

In my first blog entry I posted a list of new features that will be available in 11.1, which is scheduled to be released on November 15th. Over the next week I'll provide more information about each of these new features. Let's start with the new controls for .NET Web Form applications.

If you've done any work with PowerBuilder 11 and .NET Web Form targets, you know that you need to install and configure the IE Web Controls on the IIS server before you can deploy and run your web form application. Fortunately this is a process you only have to do once (per server anyway), but it can be a pain to get working, especially if you miss a step.

With 11.1 you will have a new web configuration option called PBWebControlSource. By default it is set to IE, which means your application will use the IE Web Controls for menus, toolbars, the DatePicker control, and the MonthCalendar control. You can change that property to RAD though and then the new and improved controls will be implemented at runtime.

Besides having a better look and feel, the RAD controls require no developer installation or configuration. They get installed automatically when you deploy your application.
Here is a screen shot of what the RAD menu and toolbar controls look like:

Note that the rad menu control supports menu icons and gradients. An annoying feature of the IE Web Control menu was that the user had to actually click on the text of a menu item for the clicked event to fire. If they clicked to the left or right of the text, nothing happened.

The new menu control behaves the same way as a Windows application menu. The toolbar also supports gradient and looks much like the contemporary menu in a PowerBuilder Windows application.

The new DatePicker and MonthCalendar controls look a lot better and offer most of the features found in the Windows version of those controls.

The TreeView control was going to be replaced but we ran into performance issues during testing and had to remove that control. This means that if your application uses TreeView controls you still need to have the IE Web Controls installed and configured on your web server, even if you choose the RAD configuration option. We are looking at replacing the IE Web Controls TreeView control in 11.2 (due out in late Q1 2008 by the way) with an AJAX control.

In my next entry I'll talk about the enhancements in 11.1 to support Vista. I'll also go through a list of things to watch out for when using PowerBuilder on Vista, or deploying your applications on that OS.

PowerBuilder 11.1 Coming Soon!

PowerBuilder 11.1 will be released in a little over a week. While maintenance releases are usually not something to get too excited about, this one has some new features that are definitely worth exploring:

1. Enhanced Vista support
2. Data pipeline support for .NET Windows Forms targets
3. Informix 10 Database support
4. New .NET Web Form controls for menus, toolbars and the calendar control
5. Incremental Rebuild for .NET Application Targets
6. Specifying null values as retrieval arguments in the DataWindow painter
7. Statement caching for Oracle 10g
8. Enhanced identity column support for ASE 15
9. Orcascript enhancements
10. Page display properties for RichTextEdit controls
11. Web service client support in Web Forms

11.1 will be a free update for anyone who has PowerBuilder 11. I'll post information on how to download it once it becomes available.

Over the next week I'll be posting in detail about the new or enhanced features in PowerBuilder 11.1 so stay tuned.

Finally, be sure to check out my colleague Jim O'Neil's ISUG webcast on Tuesday November 13th. The topic is creating .NET Assemblies from PowerBuilder NVOs. You can register for it here.