Going Modern

PowerBuilder has been around and successful for almost two decades now and after many discussions with PowerBuilder developers, it has become apparent to me what the marquee feature of PowerBuilder really is.  Some developers would comment on the ease of report creation, and others on the presence of client-side processing capabilities, but most only wanted to talk about their beloved Data Window.  After taking a look at what makes the DataWindow tick, it is truly the power of the DataWindow that makes developers’ lives easy.

Over the last 18 months, I’ve gotten to work with a variety of PowerBuilder versions, and had first-hand experience with the Data Window. When you look at it, it is a fantastic piece of tech.  For those of you who don’t understand the concept and what it does, let me try to explain.  The DataWindow is a group of user interface elements that can easily be tied to the database using the PowerBuilder IDE.  What makes the DataWindow so sticky is that once the interface has been defined and the SQL statements have been written, the two-way data connection can be made. Two way data means that if the data is updated on the UI and saved by the user it will be persisted to the database, and if the data changes on the database, upon refresh of the UI that data will be sent back. Developers love this because it is a minimal amount of code to begin developing screens that map to their business requirements quickly. This allows them to focus on the solving the business problem at hand because they do not have to worry about application infrastructure.

Unfortunately, there are number of architectural elements of PowerBuilder that severely limit its ability continue to be a viable option for continued IT support. Most prominently is its lack of support for a rich web environment that can recreate the performance, client side processing capabilities, and UI widgets that are considered standard in today’s Web 2.0 frameworks and delivered in a centrally managed, no-install medium. Also, finding resources to maintain and enhance PowerBuilder are severely hindering the IT department’s ability to continue support these applications as they age. The customers I’m working with are in need of a solution for the deployment issues, legacy language/skillset issues, diminishing support for PowerBuilder, and the need to move to a more open codebase like Java.

To help these customers, we’ve built Java technology that should be an easy transition for current PowerBuilder developers and Java developers interested in building a Java web app that gives that “Desktop Application in a Browser” feeling. In addition to building technology that can meet or exceed the client side capabilities of a PowerBuilder application in the web, Nexaweb has developed a semi-automated process that can quickly cut the process of moving from PowerBuilder to J2EE with greater functionality, flexibility and maintainability.

Modernizing to J2EE from PowerBuilder will be our focus in a demo today (Wednesday, February 17 at 2 p.m. EST) during our webinar with Sierra Atlantic.  I would definitely recommend checking it out.  You can register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/798601449.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 6:56 am and is filed under Java. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.