1. How long will PowerBuilder be used in your company?
2. In 2005, will you mainly use PowerBuilder to maintain or develop your applications?
3. How many developers will use PowerBuilder in your company in 2005? (aproximately)
4. Which PowerBuilder version do you currently use?
5. In 2005, do you plan to migrate to a more recent PowerBuilder version?
6. Does your application include stored procedures?
7. Do you use PowerBuilder to develop your Web Applications?
8. Do you use PocketBuilder to develop Mobile Applications?
9. Do you use DW.Net to develop .Net Applications?
10. Which other technologies are (or will be) used in your company?
11. Which improvements are you waiting for the most?
12. What is your opinion about PowerBuilder?
13. Respondents comments
14. Countries of origin

Few users say they have stopped using PowerBuilder... then of course those who answer our questions are those who use it!

Nevertheless, these current PowerBuilder users plan on using it for quite a few more years: 76% declare they will be using it for more than the next two years.

There is an interesting change regarding new applications developed in PowerBuilder.
In 2003 6 % of the participants said they were only working on new applications (None in 2002).

After a strong increase last year (an additional 5 points in 2004) the trend seems to stabilise in 2005, 12% work solely on new PowerBuilder projects.

The difference between the USA and the rest of the world is stronger in 2005; as we said 12% in the world have been only developing in PowerBuilder compared to only 3% in the USA (There was 4 points difference in 2004 between these two results)

The number of small teams (1 to 3 developers) has increased; from 38% in 2004 to 44% in 2005. PB is still nevertheless also used by large teams (State agencies or private companies): 47% of the teams recruit 4 to 20 developers.

PowerBuilder 9 is used by 40% of the respondents while 22 % still work with PB8
and 24 % with previous versions which are not supported by Sybase anymore.

The number of developers using PB10 has already increased from 1% en 2004 to 13% this year.

Finally, nearly half of the participants plan to migrate to a more recent version of PB.

Most PowerBuilder projects used Stored Procedures (83%).
Unsurprisingly most of them 52% use Sybase's language: Transac SQL.
Still PL SQL is used for 29% of the PB applications.

The use of PowerBuilder for Web development was quite stable for 2 years; today there is a slight decline: 15% of the users use PowerBuilder to develop their web application (18% in 2004).

On the contrary the number of people who intend to develop all or part of their web application with PowerBuilder in the future has increased from 50 to 55% since last year’s results.

9% of the participants use PocketBuilder to develop their mobiles applications.
41% of them plan in using it in the future.

7% of the participants use DW.Net for the development of their .NET applications.
46% of theses respondents plan on using it in the future.

54% answered Microsoft which is close to the 2004 results. Java gains 2 points from the 2004 answers and is the leading answer with Microsoft in our survey this year with 54%.

On the whole companies confirm they will be using different tools simultaneously.

A massive majority of developers answers this question.
Among the improvements mentioned the most expected one is a better integration to .NET (50%) closely followed by the wish for Windows Graphical Objects improvements and those of PowerScript (46%). It is interesting to learn about the remaining answers as they represent 33%.

Although there is a slight decrease in the rate of satisfaction, in average, PowerBuilder was marked is 8/10.
- 33 % are very satisfied (9/10 & 10/10), compared to 39% in 2004 but only 23% in 2003 and 18% in 2002.
- 16% are not satisfied (marks between 0/10 and 6/10) when it was 12% in 2004, 18% in 2003 and 17% in 2002.