Subject: Old PowerBuilder Facebook page deactivated



PowerBuilder Fan Page

Hi Everyone,

Happy new year!

As of today, the old PowerBuilder facebook page is deactivated.

Please be sure to become a fan of PowerBuilder here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/PowerBuilder/160355699256

Go PB!!

Years ago PowerBuilder was king.  No one could touch it.  It was relatively inexpensive.  Microsoft’s Visual Basic matured and the Pascal based Borland’s Delphi was released.  Then it fell and fall it did.

Sybase

As it was falling from the throne Sybase purchased Powersoft, makers of PowerBuilder.  As the the market share continued to shrink, PowerBuilder developers had more difficulty in finding new projects.  Most new development was written in Visual Basic or Java.

Years went by with marketing of PowerBuilder little more than the occasional road show, TechWave presentations and the ISUG Technical Journal ads catered towards existing customers.  Little to no effort was put forth by Sybase to gain new PowerBuilder customers.

During this week’s Sybase TechWave, PowerBuilder version 12 was released.  It has all the whistles and kitchen sinks you could ask for.   An amazing tool for development!  Too bad no one outside of the die hard PowerBuilder programmers will use it.

Blasphemy!  Heretic!

Consider this:

Sybase owns PowerBuilder.  It owns the PowerBuilder software, PowerBuilder language, PowerScript, the PowerBuilder vm, and everything PowerBuilder.

No problem right?

What will happen to PowerBuilder when Sybase is bought out by another company?  Products with tiny market share like PowerBuilder would likely be killed or in a state of limbo for several years.  Anyone remember what happened when IBM bought Informix?

Do you really want to bet your career and business on a software development tool that is locked to a single smallish vendor?

Maybe, perhaps, if Sybase were to release the PowerBuilder 4GL language and PowerScript to the world like Microsoft did with the C# and Visual Basic languages and Sun with Java…   Perhaps if Sybase would allow 3rd parties to develop tools based around the PowerBuilder language royalty free…

Sybase:  PLEASE FREE THE POWERBUILDER 4GL LANGUAGE!

I mean, really, what benefit could Sybase have to cripple the PowerBuilder developers?

It is the most installed embedded database on the planet hands down.  Don’t believe me?  You know that Firefox web browser, Thunderbird newsreader, most Adobe products, Miro, etc all have it embedded?  – reference http://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html

We use it extensively at work as:

1. staging for mass data imports/exports/conversions
2. local application ‘cache’ for large data sets
3. projects that don’t require all the features of Sybase ASE (or Oracle for that matter)

One of the best features is that the database itself in platform independent… copy the db on to AIX from your Windows box … then on to your old Amiga … then on to your windows mobile device.  Getting the point? 

I really wish Sybase would make it so that the Sybase ASE databases were truly platform and character set/sort order independent… but that is in another dream

Not a blurb in the PowerDesigner/PowerBuilder manuals or anything

ISUG North American PowerBuilder Tour – Q1, 2008

Additional Dates by Popular Demand!

Sponsored by: Appeon, Enable, Novalys, Sybase

Following on from our successful multi-city tour in 2007, ISUG is pleased to announce additional dates for the PowerBuilder 11 Tour!

 

• Feb 26th: San Jose, CA – Embassy Suites, Santa Clara
• Feb 27th: Los Angeles, CA – Embassy Suites North, LAX
• Feb 28th: San Diego, CA – Windmill Banquet & Catering, Carlsbad

During these events you will:

• Consume .NET Resources using PowerBuilder 11′s . NET Interoperability
• Create .NET Resources from existing PowerBuilder NVOs
  • .NET assemblies
  • .NET Web Services
• Use PowerBuilder 11 and ASP.NET 2.0 to create Web Form Applications
• Build WinForm & Smart Client Applications right from within PowerBuilder.
• Set up SQL Anywhere 10 as your back-end database for .NET activity

In addition, we’ll present:

• A special early morning session on troubleshooting installation issues
• Information on companion products from ISUG partners
• Tips and Tricks on migrating to PowerBuilder 11 from earlier versions

PLUS! A very special first for PowerBuilder users as Enable Development introduces its Source Change for PowerBuilder! Be the first to see this awesome technology first-hand — a tool no serious PowerBuilder developer can be without!

All events begin at 8:00am local time, and end at 5:30pm.

To register for this tour, visit: www.isug.com/pb11tour_registration. Registration fees for this event are as follows:

Pre-Registration (more than 3 days prior to the event):

• ISUG Members – Gold Benefits – $99
• ISUG Members – Silver Benefits – $129^*
• ISUG Members – Basic Benefits – $179^*
• Non-Members – $249⁺

Last-Minute/Onsite Registration (3 days or less prior to the event):

• ISUG Members – Gold Benefits – $149
• ISUG Members – Silver Benefits – $179^*
• ISUG Members – Basic Benefits – $229^*
• Non-Members – $299⁺

^* Includes upgrade to Gold Benefits
⁺ Includes ISUG membership with Gold Benefits

Non-members: Save $55 by joining ISUG here for just $95, and then register at the discounted Gold price!!!

Businesses: Want to send multiple employees? Ask us about our corporate discounts! Send an email to  – Be sure to specify how many people you will be sending.

All attendees wishing to participate hands-on should bring a laptop pre-installed with the required software (provided by the ISUG Gold Benefits package). Note that this is not required to attend, only if you wish to follow along with the labs.

What *I* personally would like to see is:

1. step by step online tutorials to create a multitude of projects – from simple ‘hello world’ applications to database connected applications to .NET to AJAX enabled .NET web apps
2. online videos for the new and experienced developers rather than just feature highlights
3. more books… from the “Beginning PowerBuilder 11″ (perhaps a ‘for Dummies’ series type book) to super advanced PB11
4. more podcasts ( take a look at Meet the Gimp for example format )
5. PowerBuilder gallery of open source and commercial PB applications (please don’t just point to the abomination known as codexchange) and online pb communities
6. A better tiered licensing model: Free version (take a look at Microsoft’s VB Express for a model of what should be included for free), Student (K-university) edition, Professional / Small Business, Enterprise. There should be NO feature differences between the student and enterprise editions – the only difference should be in what PB can be used for (licensing).
7. Open source & hobby-ist development should be actively promoted to help rebuild the PB community

Can anyone think of anything else to help new developers learn PowerBuilder?

• Oct 23: Des Moines, IA – Des Moines Airport Conference Center
• Oct 24: St. Paul, MN – Minnesota Humanities Center
• Oct 25: Regina, SK – Ramada Inn & Conference Centre
• Nov 13: Indianapolis, IN – Ramada Indianapolis Airport
• Nov 14: Toronto, ON – Days Hotel and Conference Centre Toronto Airport East
• Nov 15: Montreal, QC – Hôtel Ramada aéroport-Montréal
• ^NewNov 26: Salt Lake City, UT – Davis County Memorial Courthouse, Farmington
• Nov 27: Phoenix, AZ – Offices of DS Solutions
• Nov 28: San Diego, CA – Location to be confirmed
• Nov 29: Seattle, WA – Tentative location: Best Western Executel, Seattle Airport
• Dec 11: Orlando, FL – Tentative location: AmeriSuites Airport NW
• Dec 12: Washington, D.C. – Holiday Inn, Dulles Airport
• Dec 13: Atlanta, GA – La Quinta Inn & Suites, Atlanta Airport

So what is this PowerBuilder tour all about? Well, it is not only to show off the latest and greatest features of PowerBuilder 11 but these fine folks will train you so you can do everything they can!

Think it is expensive or your boss will say no? Well, it is only $49 if you register before October 10th (this Wednesday). It is being hosted by Appeon, Enable, Novalys, Sybase and ISUG.

SPECIAL PLENARY SESSION — Advancing the Boundaries of Development: How IT developers will face the future.
Tuesday, 1-2:15 p.m. PDT. | View the recorded webcast

Using the PowerBuilder Application Server Plugin
Wednesday, 1 – 2 p.m. PDT. Speaker: Evan Ireland | View the recorded webcast

Using .NET Classes in PowerBuilder
Wednesday, 2:15 – 3:45 p.m. Speaker: Xue-song Wu | View the recorded webcast

Best Practices of PowerBuilder 11.0 WinForm/Smart Client Application Development
Wednesday, 4 – 5:30 p.m. Speaker: Harry Zhang | View the recorded webcast

The DataWindow in PowerBuilder WebForm Targets
Thursday, 1 – 2 p.m. Speaker: Frederick Koh | View the recorded webcast

PowerBuilder: Service Creation
Thursday, 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. Speaker: Sheila Wood | View the recorded webcast

Did you know that you can build .NET applications easily with PowerBuilder? I did, but I didn’t realize that it was very very easy! Say good bye to C# and VB.net for any database application, because PowerBuilder is back and BETTER than anything that Microsoft has to offer!

Most importantly, the video of the key note, Future Development Will Rely on Current Core Technologies, should be out in the next few days. I’ll post the link to it…. it ultimately was the final motivator to make me pick up PowerBuilder 11. Thanks to Jason Fentor for dragging me to the keynote!

UPDATE:   Future Development Will Rely on Current Core Technologies video is here!  When you open the video click down to “PowerBuilder 11: Accelerate your development”

It took me 10 minutes from knowing absolutely no PowerBuilder to building a working client/server .NET application connecting three wildly different databases (Sybase ASE, MySQL and PostgreSQL) and retrieving/updating data to them! TEN MINUTES! I expected an hour or two but ten minutes… I’m just completely floored!

Sorry, I’m not usually this impressed and try to take everything with a grain of salt, but… Sybase, with all your faults, dang! You did good!

For comparison: The same application took me 30 minutes to write in Perl, which I’m pretty good at.