PowerBuilder 10.5 is almost ready, and I'm sure you have a lot of questions
about what's in the release and how it can make your job easier. You are also
probably wondering why it's called "10.5," how it fits in with our roadmap
for PowerBuilder, and what our plans are for tools in general, especially in
light of the news that Borland is selling off its IDE product set. I will
attempt to answer those questions and more in this update on the latest
release.
Let's address these items in reverse, starting with what is probably on
everyone's mind - Borland's recent announcement to divest their IDE business.
We've had some newsgroup postings and e-mails from concerned customers about
our plans and if this affects our future direction at all for PowerBuilder,
as well as our focus on tools in general. Rest assured that Sybase is
committed to its developer tools. In fact, ... (more)
Are you a long-time PowerBuilder user who's still developing on an early
version such as 5.x or 6.x? If so, now is the perfect time to move to
PowerBuilder 9.0 for two reasons:
1. You'll get the latest version of the industry's leading RAD environment
with new client/server, Web, and distributed functionality.
2. You'll be on a supported version of PowerBuilder. Engineering support
for PowerBuilder 5.x and 6.x is no longer offered, and Sybase has announced
the end of engineering support for all versions of PowerBuilder 7.x effective
July 15, 2003.
Update to PowerBuilder 9.0
Pow... (more)
The launch of PowerBuilder 8 coincides with the 10 year anniversary of the
product. Sybase focused on three major areas in this release - the Web,
EAServer integration, and n-tier development and productivity. Sybase has
introduced a host of new features that speed up the development of
client/server applications and provide some significant capabilities for next
generation application development. The following is a Q & A with the
PowerBuilder product manager, Sue Dunnell, and the editors of PBDJ.
Q: Toward whom is this release oriented?
A: This release was designed with the nee... (more)
Remember the excitement you felt when you first learned to develop
applications with PowerBuilder? Instead of taking three weeks to build a
window like your C counterparts, you were painting windows in less than three
minutes - and you were able to code functionality to connect those windows to
your enterprise database! You delighted management by delivering projects in
record time, you dazzled users with nifty graphics and easy to navigate
applications, and you could even implement end users' change requests with
lightning speed.
A long time has passed since those days, and the... (more)
There's no denying it. We're living in an n-tier world, especially since the
release of PowerBuilder 7.0 and the Web DataWindow. It's almost
counterintuitively caused many PB developers to ask themselves questions
like: "What am I going to do with my client/server PowerBuilder skills? Where
is the market going? Do I have to learn Java and JavaScript? Or C++? Or VB
and VBScript?"
As the manager at Sybase most immediately responsible for the future of
PowerBuilder, I'm going to offer some clear-cut answers to these questions.
Future Lives, Future Livings: Careers for PowerBuilder D... (more)