PowerBuilder

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PowerBuilder
Basic data

developer Appeon Inc.
Publishing year July 1992
Current  version PowerBuilder 2019
( May 31, 2019 )
operating system Windows
programming language C ++ , C # , PowerScript
category Integrated development environment
License proprietary
appeon.com

PowerBuilder is an integrated development environment for creating client-server applications that was originally developed by PowerSoft. It was initially taken over by Sybase , which has been part of the SAP Group since 2010 , and sold on to Appeon Inc. in 2016. A development branch of PowerBuilder is the PocketBuilder, which also enables the development of applications for Windows Mobile , but initially did not contain support for the .NET Framework .

In addition, the "PowerBuilder Application Server Plugin" is available as an extension. It enables PowerBuilder objects (NVOs) to be executed in application servers from other manufacturers (e.g. WebSphere , WebLogic , WildFly , Oracle Application Server , Apache Geronimo ).

history

From PowerBuilder 11 (July 2007) it was possible to display an existing or new PowerBuilder application as a web application in a browser (IE) using Microsoft Internet Information Services , ASP.NET and .NET Framework. PowerBuilder 11.2 also simplified the development of web applications by using AJAX.NET 1.0.

With PowerBuilder 11.5 (September 2008) .NET integration for Winform and Webform applications has been advanced. Extensions to the DataWindows (including RTF columns and 3D graphics with DirectX support) as well as Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Oracle 11g support were additional components of version 11.5. At the same time, the Enterprise Edition was delivered as standard with a version of the PocketBuilder and a license for the PowerBuilder Application Server Plugin.

In addition to the “Classic” version, a .NET version with a new IDE based on the Visual Studio Isolated Shell was available as of version 12.0, which was published in April 2010, to supplement the Classic IDE. This new .NET IDE version offered the possibility to generate 100% managed .NET code with WPF targets. Powerbuilder 12.5 was released in August 2011. For the .NET version, the .NET version 4.0 was then the basis. But the classic version also received various extensions.

In August 2014, the first PowerBuilder version followed, which was developed under the then new owner SAP. The release, originally announced as version 15, was renamed to version 12.6 before it was released. In addition to various smaller enhancements, this version primarily brought OData support and the compilation of native 64-bit Windows applications.

After the takeover by Appeon, the PowerBuilder 2017 version appeared on June 30, 2017 in three different editions ("Standard", "Cloud" and "Universal"), which differ in terms of functionality. In contrast to the previous licensing policy, Appeon sells PowerBuilder with a personal "non-perpetual license". This means that you only acquire one right of use for a specific user and limited to one year and then you have to renew it if you want to continue using the product. Programs created can still be run after the license has expired, but changes to the code are no longer possible. The main innovations in PowerBuilder 2017 were the support of Windows 10 and Microsoft's SQL Server 2016, the integrated creation of PDF documents, the ability to create mobile apps and a modernized GUI .

Since the first version of PowerBuilder 2017, new releases have appeared at approximately half-yearly intervals. Since February 1st, 2019, the current version is PowerBuilder 2017 R3.

PowerScript

The programming language is called PowerScript, is script-based, object-oriented and is similar to Visual Basic (VB) , which was developed later . It is designed to react to events in graphical user interfaces . The special thing about PowerScript is the close cooperation with databases . The database queries ( SQL selects) are stored in DataWindow objects. The latter can be used for input forms as well as for evaluations. The DataWindow objects are inserted into a DataWindow control (container) in order to use them. The DataWindow is also available for .NET (Windows and Web Forms) under the name DataWindow.NET.

"Hello world" in PowerScript

The following source code outputs the message "Hello world!" In a notification window: 

MessageBox("Nachricht", "Hallo Welt!")

In contrast to most other programming languages, PowerScript does not distinguish between upper and lower case, neither in the syntactic elements nor in the names of variables. You can also use single or double quotes for character strings. The above call could just as easily be written as follows: 

messagebox('Nachricht', 'Hallo Welt!')

The output under Windows looks like this:

Hello World!

Output in a predefined window win_hallowelt in the text field st_text : 

open(win_hallowelt)
win_hallowelt.st_text.text = "Hallo Welt!"

See also

Web links