PowerBuilder 11.5 Screen shots

On the PowerBuilder newsgroups I promised to post some screen shots of some of the new DataWindow features in PowerBuilder 11.5. Well a new build will be available tomorrow (April 24th) and I want to use that build to show some of the features. Thanks for your patience.

PowerBuilder and SOA Webcast This Week!

In case you didn't get the email, I'm repeating the information here:

PowerBuilder has always been about helping you solve very real business needs in the fastest, most uncomplicated way. Now, we are bringing you an educational two-part webcast series that will show you how to employ PowerBuilder to accelerate your SOA development effort.

During the first webcast, Sybase PowerBuilder evangelist, John Strano will show you how using PowerBuilder and DataWindow technology in the implementation layer of your Service Oriented Architecture projects will preserve the SOA promise of Business Agility. During the second webcast, John will walk you through how PowerBuilder safeguards agility when presenting SOA - originating data to the user for analysis and modification.

We hope you can join us as we show you how PowerBuilder’s proven technology can continue to solve your emerging business challenges. Register for the PowerBuilder and SOA webcast series today.

Details:Webcast Part I: How to accelerate SOA Development with PowerBuilder Date: Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Time: 9 AM PT/12 PM ET

Webcast Part II: Safeguarding SOA agility with PowerBuilder Date: Wednesday, April 30th, 2008Time: 9 AM PT/12 PM ET

Find out more and sign up here

Calling an application's window in a Web Form application

One question I'm frequently asked is, "How can I have my PowerBuilder application's windows turned into separate web pages?". If you've deployed a PowerBuilder application to the web using the .NET Web Form target, and then examined the application's directory on the web server you've noticed that there is only one ASP .NET page created (default.aspx)!

Think of that as the web equivalent of the bootstrapper .exe PowerBuilder generates in a traditional Windows application. The goal for PowerBuilder 11 was to allow you to take existing Windows applications to the web with a minimal amount of refactoring. That's all well and good, but many of you out there want to incorporate pieces of your existing PowerBuilder applications into standalone web applications or portals created using Visual Studio or some other product. Don't worry, all is not lost. It might take a little extra work (how much work depends on how you've designed your client server application in the first place) but you can leverage your existing client server application logic into new web applications without having to do a complete rewrite.

The trick is to use the commandline parameter. If you open the application object in PowerBuilder and go to the Open event, you'll notice that it recieves one argument called Commandline:




For Web Form targets, PowerBuilder lets you pass a value to the commandline by using the PBCommandParm parameter. It is as straightforward as calling the application in a URL like this:

http://myserver/myapp/default.htm?PBCommandParm=CUSTOMER

In the application Open event you can capture the value and process it any way you like. For example:

CHOOSE CASE commandline
CASE "CUSTOMER"
Open (w_mss_customer_master)
CASE "PRODUCT"
Open (w_mss_product_master)
CASE ELSE
Open ( w_mssmain_frame )
END CHOOSE

Using the Marketing Support System sample application as an example, if the application were to be run with no commandline parameter, the standard MDI frame would open and the browser would looks something like this:

http://myserver/myapp



If we call the same application but use a URL like this:

http://myserver/myapp/default.htm?PBCommandParm=CUSTOMER

The browser will open and select the Customer window:





Note: we call the default.htm file to hide the web browser's menu and toolbar. Default.htm is just a wrapper to the default.aspx but it contains some Javascript code to resize the browser and hide the menu and toolbar.

So that's all there is to it. Or is it? What if you want to pass multiple parameters? Well there is only one commandline parameter for the application's open event, but you can pass multiple parameters in using %20, the ASCII character code for an empty space in the URL.

http://myserver/myapp/default.htm?PBCommandParm=CUSTOMER%20FISH

All of the parameters will get concatenated into one commandline string so you will need to use the left, mid, or right functions, along with the pos function in Powerscript to parse them out (see the PowerBuilder Help file for details).

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