Solve Your Top Business Problems Today with PowerBuilder

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Solve Your Top Business Problems
TodaywithPowerBuilder

• Hands On the Challenge

John Strano, Sybase Technology Evangelist
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Challenge01 Challenge02
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Challenge01 Challenge02

• Thou shalt not rewrite in PowerBuilder.
• HOLD ON! Did you say refactor? Isnt that a
  fancy, marketing type of word for rewrite? Ive
  been told that any rewriting will be done in a
  new language, NOT PowerBuilder!

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Challenge01 Challenge02

• Solution
• Using PowerBuilder 11.5, you will modify an old
  app that gets a new ID and the default sales
  representative for a newly-inserted customer
  according to their state or province of
  recordall within the clicked event of a
  commandbutton.
• You will move that logic to methods of a new NVO
  that is then deployed as a .NET Web Service.

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Challenge01 Challenge02

• Take away message
• Rewriting in PowerBuilder is ALWAYS the best
  investment because it will be the cheapest,
  fastest way to solve your business problems.

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Challenge03

• Challenge
• I need to expose my internal logic to my .NET
  peers.
• Our PowerBuilder application has some critical
  business logic and data that the .NET development
  team needs access to.

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Challenge03

• Solution
• Deploy the NVO as a .NET Assembly.

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Challenge03

• Take away message
• Assuming that your application was well written
  and youve encapsulated your business logic,
  separating it from the UI, you can easily
  redeploy this NVO as a .NET Assembly.
• Rewriting anything, fixing anything, will always
  be easiest to do and the most cost effective when
  done with PowerBuilder.

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Challenge04

• Challenge
• Web Services...we need to build em, use em, and
  manage them. Can PowerBuilder do this?

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Challenge04

• Solution
• Create an NVO with 4 methods to SELECT, INSERT,
  UPDATE, DELETE a Customer.
• Deploy this NVO as a .NET Web Service.
• Change the detail DataWindow Object in Customer
  maintenance to use these Service operations as
  its data source.
• Add logic to the INSERT method/operation that
  calls the NVO that has been deployed as a .NET
  Web Service to get the new Customers default
  sales representative.

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Challenge04

• Take away message
• PowerBuilder is the easiest way to use Web
  Services, whether that means building them, using
  them, and/or managing them.

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Challenge05

• We must, we must, we must increase our ubiquity!
• Or, we need to access our applications from the
  Web!
• My users want a Web interface for their
  application, so management wants a new
  application written for the Web.
• Is there anything I can do quickly to get a few
  pages up on the Web?

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Challenge05

• Solution
• PowerBuilder 11.x WebForms.
• From scratch, build a single window with a single
  DataWindow that retrieves and updates the
  Employee table from the demo databasethen deploy
  it to the Webin less than 10 minutes.

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Challenge05

• Take away message
• Its always been easy to quickly build a working
  prototype and a working application in
  PowerBuilder
• Now, you can just as easily build a few new Web
  pages and access your client/server data sources.
  
• With PowerBuilder ease and speed, you can quickly
  give you users Web access by building new Web
  pages in a Win32 environment.

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Challenge06

• Challenge
• We must move our ENTIRE application to the Web.
• My problem is bigger than just a few pages I
  need to move my entire application to the Web.
• Its huge and complex, and because its written
  for a c/s architecture, my management thinks its
  old, outdated, and needs to be rewritten.

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Challenge06

• Solution
• Demonstrate deploying your traditional Win32
  application using PowerBuilders WebForm
  deployment capabilityalong with its extant Web
  Service usage.

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Challenge06

• Take away message
• Your business is run with a solid application
  that was designed for a c/s environment, but now
  it can easily be moved to the Web, without taking
  years or hundreds of thousands of dollarsor
  more.
• PowerBuilders WebForm deployment can Web-enable
  that application.

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Challenge07

• Challenge
• It is too time consuming, and therefore too
  expensive, to keep updating our client desktop
  application.
• But, were not sure the Web is the right way to
  go as there are issues moving to the Web, too,
  such as managing state, ensuring a specific
  browser is used, etc.

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Challenge07

• Solution
• Deploy your application as a Smart Client!
• You will publish your traditional Win32
  application as a Smart Client .NET WinForm
  application.

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Challenge07

• Take away message
• Take advantage of the ubiquity of the Web, but
  deliver a fully functional, feature rich GUI.
• Smart Client is smart.
• PowerBuilder does Smart Client.
• Therefore, PowerBuilder is smart.

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Challenge08

• Challenge
• Update an old, ugly UI. Or, You can see a
  PowerBuilder application coming from a mile
  away...
• My existing PowerBuilder application looks old
  and dated, sporting a Win95 look and feel, and
  this is a huge issue because it only serves to
  perpetuate the undercurrent in my company to
  rewrite this app in C or Java (depending upon
  type of shop).

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Challenge08

• Challenge (contd)
• If I could only update this applications UI
  quickly and easily, I could use that to
  demonstrate PowerBuilders power.
• What should I do?

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Challenge08

• Solution
• Perform a quick, yet significant update of a
  portion of your application using PowerBuilder
  11.5 DataWindow enhancements.
• You will optionally publish these visual
  enhancements using Smart Client.

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Challenge08

• Take away message
• PowerBuilder applications can get a facelift in
  no time and look modern and up-to-date by simply
  updating your version.
• In the future, well be taking you to new heights
  with WPF and beyond.