PowerBuilder 10

1
PowerBuilder 10
Berndt Hamboeck hamboeck_at_pocketpb.com
2
Agenda

• Major features in PowerBuilder 10
• Plug-In technology and PowerDesigner
• EAServer components as WebServices
• UDDI support in PowerBuilder
• XML-Web DataWindow
• DataWindow .NET
• Unicode support
• Other changes

3
Plug-In Technology
4
Plug-In Technology

• The good news!!
• Plug-In technology will be open for everyone
• PB community can write own Plug-Ins
• PBGenericPlugin100.dll
• appears to be COM component
• Plugins stored in registry
• HKLM\Software\Sybase\PowerBuilder\10.0\PBPlugins

5
Plug-In Technology

• The bad news!!
• Specification not before PowerBuilder 11 for the
  public

6
PowerDesigner Plug-In

• Many Applications in use today have not undergone
  formal design
• Many applications have a less than desirable
  architecture
• This makes the application difficult to maintain
• This makes the application difficult to enhance
• Few client/server applications can easily be
  partitioned for n-tier or web deployment
• It has been a market trend of late to integrate
  programming and modeling tools
• With PowerBuilder 10, application designers
  anddevelopers now have a productive design
  anddevelopment integration tool

7
Web Services Enhancements
8
Web Services Enhancements

• The PowerBuilder developer no longer needs to
  utilize the Web Services Toolkit within Jaguar
  Manager or Eclipse
• PowerBuilder 10 will allow developers to deploy
  their components (NVOs) directly to EAServer 5.0
  as (Axis) Web Services

9
Web Services Enhancements - UDDI

• UDDI - Universal Description, Discovery and
  Integration (UDDI) Service is an industry-wide
  effort to bring a common standard for
  business-to-business (B2B) integration
• It defines a set of standard interfaces for
  accessing a database/directory of web services
• As a pioneer of web service implementations, we
  provide this web interface to the live registries

10
Web Services Enhancements - UDDI

• Simply put, if a user wants to search for a web
  service on the Internet, they can use the new
  UDDI browser to find it

11
Web Services Enhancements - UDDI
12
Web Services Enhancements - UDDI

• PowerBuilder 10 provides wizards to guide
  developers for UDDI browsing and consuming
  searched Web Services in both PowerBuilder
  applications and JSP clients
• PB developers may also use this UDDI searching
  capability and build it into their PB
  applications since this UDDI feature would be
  delivered as a PBNI extension

13
Web Services Enhancements - UDDI
14
DataWindow.NET
15
DataWindow.NET

• DataWindow.NET
• Provide DataWindow.NET Classes in C
• Use DataWindow for building your .NET
  applications
• Use DataWindow controls in your Windows Form now,
  and Web Forms soon

16
Unicode
17
Unicode enabling

• PB 10 will be fully Unicode enabled
• Multiple languages within same DataWindow
• Developers may input, retrieve and display
  multiple languages in Unicode
• Within the same window
• Within the same DataWindow.
• Develop your application in single set of codes
  and deploy to different language environments

18
Unicode enabling

• Unicode enabling - Definitions
• DBCS - double-byte character set
• Uses 1 byte to represent a character such as
  ASCII and European languages.
• Use double bytes to represent a character such as
  Chinese, Japanese.
• Different languages have different character
  sets/code pages!!!
• DBCS PBL
• The PBL developed in PowerBuilder 9/8/7.
• The encoding for source code in PBL is in DBCS.

19
Unicode enabling

• Unicode enabling - Definitions
• Unicode
• Unicode provides a unique number for every
  character, no matter what the platforms/languages
  are.
• It uses a single coded character set that maps
  each character in the abstract repertoire to a
  21-bit value.
• Unicode PBL
• The PBL developed in PB10 and above.
• The encoding for source code is in Unicode

20
Unicode enabling

• String-Related Functions
• In PowerScript, some string manipulation
  functions have been modified to handle Unicode
  data.
• Affected functions
• Calculating the length of a string
• Manipulating a string based its length or the
  absolute position within a string
• Deriving sub-strings.
• WinAPI
• Exporting/Importing
• When you export an object to a .sr file, you can
  choose to export it in ANSI, HEXASCII, UTF-8, or
  UTF-16LE formats.
• When you import a file with any format,
  PowerBuilder converts it to Unicode.

21
Unicode enabling

• New Functions
• The AscW function converts the first character of
  a string to its Unicode code point. A code point
  is the numerical integer value given to a Unicode
  character.
• The CharW function extracts the first Unicode
  character from a string or converts an integer to
  a char.
• The FileLenth64 and FileSeek64 provide support
  for larger files and return a longlong value and
  can be used with files of any size.
• Overloaded functions
• String (blob, encoding)
• Blob (string, encoding)

22
Unicode enabling

• PowerBuilder 10 helps you during migration!
• Convert DBCS String-Manipulation Functions check
  box on the Migrate Application dialog box, Asc is
  converted to AscW and Char to CharW.
• Converts API calls using String parameters
• Private Function Long mciExecute (String
  lpstrCommand) Library "winmm.dll" alias for
  "mciExecuteAnsi"

23
XHTML Web DataWindow
24
XHTML Web DataWindow

• The HTML Web DataWindow so far

25
XHTML Web DataWindow

• HTMLGenerator 90
• DataWindow generated entirely in static HTML page
• Regeneration required on every roundtrip to
  server
• Server processing/scalability unnecessarily
  strained
• Bandwidth misspent on unnecessary downloads
• Generator is string-buffer-based, limiting
  extensibility
• Customization of generated HTML or CSS not
  supported
• ALL of the presentation markup is generated too
  often

26
XHTML Web DataWindow

• When do I use the XHTML Web DataWindow?
• Since the XHTML Web DW can cache the presentation
  and stylesheet on the client
• the XHTML Web DW works especially well for
  graphically rich DataWindows which are meant for
  the user to scroll through multiple pages of
  data

27
XHTML Web DataWindow

• XHTML Web DataWindow now

28
XHTML Web DataWindow

• The XHTML Web DataWindow builds upon theexisting
  HTML Web DataWindow plus
• XML-based architecture
• Updated web technologies
• Improved performance using less bandwidth
• Using XHTML as the ultimate/final markup also
  affords the ability to customize that markup
  logically within the PowerBuilder IDE.
• Standardizes on the latest client-side XML
  technologies of the version 6 browsers.

29
XHTML Web DataWindow

• The XML Web DataWindow is essentially designed to
  separate the content, the layout, and the style
  of the DataWindow on the Web
• Since the XSLT (the layout) and the CSS (the
  stylesheet) may be cached on the client, only the
  relatively small XML content (dynamic/displayed
  data) consumes bandwidth on subsequent downloads
  as the user browses the data

30
XHTML Web DataWindow
XML Content
XSLT
Determinesstructural layout
Determines style of elements as displayed in
browser
XHTML
CSS
The DataWindow engine generates each of these
components at runtime.
31
XHTML Web DataWindow
32
Other features
33
Other New Features in PowerBuilder 10

• ADO.NET
• The System.Data.OleDb namespace is the .NET
  Framework Data Provider for OLE DB.
• Future
• Build full .NET applications in PB IDE
• Consume .NET objects in PB applications
• Convert existing PB apps to Web apps
• With 1 set of codes, optionally build Windows or
  Web applications

34
Other New Features in PowerBuilder 10

• Exception handling support in machine code
• Additional parameter for SaveAsAscii
• Boolean RetainNewLineChar. whether line feed and
  carriage return characters contained within the
  row are converted to white space. false (default)
  - line feed and carriage return characters within
  the row are converted to white space

35
Other New Features in PowerBuilder 10

• Environment variables for
• memory management
• exceptions in EAServer for PB components
• 508 Accessibility
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
  requires that when Federal departments or
  agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use
  electronic and information technology, they shall
  ensure that the technology is accessible to
  people with disabilities.
• 1194.21 specifies the requirements for software
  applications and operating systems.
• http//www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.21.h
  tm

36
PowerBuilder 10
Berndt Hamboeck hamboeck_at_pocketpb.com