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2006 Worldwide Survey
The Current and Future use of PowerBuilder
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You'll find here the final results to the following questions:

- How long do companies intend to use PowerBuilder?
- What are the new tools frequently used?
- What development tools are/will be used at the same time as PB ?
- To what extend will PowerBuilder be used for web development?
- ... and lots more!

We are now launching the 2007 edition of our survey.
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The 2006 Worldwide Survey results:
 

1. How long will PowerBuilder be used in your company?
2. In 2006, will you mainly use PowerBuilder to maintain or develop your applications?
3. How many developers will use PowerBuilder in your company in 2006? (aproximately)
4. Which PowerBuilder version do you currently use?
5. In 2006, 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 DataWindow .NET to develop .Net Applications?
10. Is your application multilingual?
11. Which other technologies are (or will be) used in your company?
12. Which improvements are you waiting for the most?
13. What is your opinion about PowerBuilder?
14. Respondents comments
15. Countries of origin

 1) How long will PowerBuilder be used in your company?
 

Few users answered that they didn't use PowerBuilder any more: of course, those who answered still use it!

However, 41% of the current users of PowerBuilder don't plan to change their language and 43% think to use it 2 years or more.

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 2) In 2006, will you mainly use PowerBuilder to maintain or develop your applications?
 
In 2006, 35% of the developers declare they work only on existing applications against 29% en 2005.

The ratio of developers working only on new developments goes from 12% in 2005 to 7% in 2006.

However, the results of the survey show a certain stability between 2002 and 2006.
Actually 58% of the developers who answered the survey in 2006 work on both existing and new PowerBuilder applications. Compare to 2002, this figure remains noticeably the same (59%).

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 3) How many developers will use PowerBuilder in your company in 2006?
 

The number of small teams (1 to 3 developers) went through a 5% decrease between 2005 and 2006 (46% to 41%).

The 2006 survey confirms that PowerBuilder is used for important projects such as departmental projects or company projects, as 50% of the teams employ from 4 to 20 developers.

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4) Which PowerBuilder version do you currently use?
 5) In 2006, do you plan to migrate to a more recent PowerBuilder version?



PowerBuilder 9 was launched in the first semester of 2003 and is the most used version in 2006 (41%) as in 2005 (40%).

However 49% of the developers plan to migrate to a more recent version of PowerBuilder in 2007, confirming their will to invest in PowerBuilder.

16% still work with PowerBuilder 8 and 18% with versions which are not supported by Sybase any more (PowerBuilder 7 and previous versions)

The percentage of developers using PowerBuilder 10 already reaches 23% in 2006 (against 12% in 2005).

 
 
 6) Does your application include stored procedures?
The vast majority of PowerBuilder projects use stored procedures (84%).

Logically 54% of the PowerBuilder projects use the Sybase Transact-SQL language.

We can note that Oracle PL/SQL is even used with 28% of the PowerBuilder applications.
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 7) Do you use PowerBuilder to develop your Web Applications?

For several years, PowerBuilder tends toward improving its features concerning the developments of web applications but without really seducing developers. However, it's worth keeping an eye on it with the launch of PB11.

Actually, only 14% of the respondents use PowerBuilder to develop web applications in 2006 against 20% in 2005.
Still, it is interesting to notice that nearly the half of the PB developers answered they would use it for this kind of development in the future.

  
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 8) Do you use PocketBuilder to develop Mobile Applications?

In 2006, only 10% of the respondents use PocketBuilder to develop their applications and 37% among them intend
to use it in the future.

  
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 9) Do you use DataWindow.Net to develop .Net Applications?

Only 8% out of the respondents use Datawindow.Net to develop their applications.Net.
However, 47% foresee to use it in the future.
As for the question 7, it will be interesting to compare the answers after the official launch of PB11.

  
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 10. Is your application multilingual?
At present 24% of PowerBuilder applications are multilingual, but 19% of the respondents eventually plan to make their applications available in several languages.
 
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 11) Which other technologies are (or will be) used in your company?
 
One more time, Microsoft confirms its leadership in this ranking (41%) and slightly widen the gap with Java (39%) in comparison to 2005.

This question clearly shows us that the firms intend to use at the same time different development tools.
 
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 12) Which improvements are you waiting for the most?
The interest for a better integration to .NET is still high (36%) but has been overtaken by the proposition of an improvement of Windows graphical objects (37%). PowerScript improvement collects 35% of answers as well.

The other proposals are also of interest as the answers are quoted by developers at least at 20%.

 
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 13) What is your opinion about PowerBuilder?
PowerBuilder is still appreciated by PowerBuilder developers, in spite of a slight decrease of the note given by the respondents:
  • 30% of the users are very satisfied (mark between 9/10 and 10/10) against 33% in 2005 and 44% in 2004.
  • 15% are not satisfied (mark between 0/10 and 6/10) against (12% in 2005 and 15% in 2004)
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 14) Comments

 

English - French - German - Spanish
 
English    
 
My work involves dealings with the Australian National Electricity Market, and our Marketing team at Macquarie Generation require up to date reliable information 24 * 7. I have been able to provide this over a period of several years thanks to Powerbuilder. I owe my career to this product. Thankyou.
 
I think Powerbuilder is a excellent product. Even though PB has not made any changes in the last 3 orr 4 years that have help me much, I have been able to continue producing great programs that complete very well against my web based competition. But I think Sybase needs to deliver improvements soon. So I am looking forward to the new PB look & the integration with .NET.
 
 
Make sure Appeon stays aligned with the changes made in PowerBuilder.
 
 
after 10 years of using PB i have taken my first classes. It's amaizing how much there is to the product. We intend to increase our use of PB because of it's ability to multi-deploy. We can have clientserver apps and web apps from the same development efforts. Clientserver is alive and well out here. Your first question is presuming that PB is obsolete. I've had PB since v2 I have never seen a product progressivly enhanced thru so many industry changes. It's technology has been updated from a simple clientserver development tool to OO and now sophisticated web support. PB is Sybases best kept secret. (there marketing department needs to wake up!)
 
 
Its a great product but is not marketed well.
 
 
We are fairly comfortable with how Powerbuilder works and meets our needs. Our biggest problem is finding developers in our area. And your market strength, seems to be dwindling, so we have moved to a C++ environment.
 
 
For the improvements above, here is my priority: 1) .NET 2) GUI 3) PowerScript 4) XML 5) Web Services 6) NVUO
 
 
pb was great for its time, but mergersacquisitions, lack of technical focusclarity, have caused us to go find other options long ago for new apps. doubtful we will ever return to pb, though never say never
 
 
The best tool out there, but quickly losing market share.
 
 
PB is still the best development environment that I have ever worked with! I now do class ASP and .NET, night and day difference as with the newer technologies it hard to do things in a standardized fashion as there is 1000000's of way to accomplish a task! Think about it ASP ASP.0, Javascript, Ajax, HTML, C#, StoredProcedures, and each of these technologies have a HUGE breadth. It's takes forever to learn the new technologies and by the time you do learn it there is a newer version that is different! Oh I miss the day of setting a transaction object and performing a dw_1.Retrieve()!
 
 
Version 9.xx is buggy
 
 
PB Datawindow still crushes all other objects for complex reporting. Fast, flexible and easiest build wSQL back end. If PB does not integrate well with Web in future then maybe, maybe, maybe we might look into EclipseBIRT to replace it.
 
 
The best web & CS tool
 
 
PB is way too far behind on the technology curve as well as the GUI curve. Customer demand has necessitated us migrating to VS2005.
 
 
Mixed feelings about PB. On the one hand no one comes close to its RAD capabilities, ease-of-use, and almost bugfree apps that can be created with it. But its inablility to be fully integrated with .NET is a major drawback. Back in the old days, PB kept lockstep with Microsoft technologies. But starting with the the COM revolution it got left behind. So we have been converting to .NET for some time.
 
 
Market forces are a greater determinant in our direction of which tools to use than actual functionality. I hate trying to get dot net datagrids to give me the functionality I have had for years with Powerbuilder.
 
 
1. PB is sometimes crashing out of sudden especially when it has been running for a while or to click 'Hideshow prototype to see arguments in functions and so on. It causes bigsmall loss of programming changes. This is the major drawback in working wPB. We can's save changes every minute. 2. As we plan to develop web application in near future, we need good reference to look at. How can we get that?
 
 
I think you are falling behind in the graphical UI department. It has been requested for years, but you still can't drop a transparent object (static text, group box, etc.) onto a window. So, trying to create a look like gradient windows or any of the fancier looks is very difficult. Please spend some time giving us controls with more functionality.
 
 
The Webservice support for .net 2 will be important for our team. PBDOM xml needs to be able to create a xml output other than a file. A blob or string is necessary. FILE IO is a show stopper. We use uNoksoft XML parser and not PBDOM. As far as development goes, our team is growing and Major Application Sections will be written with PB.
 
 
I wish Sybase would add resources to the development and marketing of PB.
 
 
It would be really nice to have PB objects and components compile to MSIL. More to the point: a true PB.NET"."
 
 
We are interested in PowerBuilder's evolution and their marketing plan to sell this product in the future.
 
 
I still love the tool - but the marketing hasn't gone so well in Sybase. Our company is large and an enterprise-wide initiative has forced us to replace all existing PB apps with J2EE JAVA applications (browser-based).
 
 
Very productive tool, that would be improved by further integration with .Net framework and servers
 
 
Sometimes too many GPF's occur during developmentdeployment without any clear indication of the source of the problem. I wish PB was as stable as Visual Studio. It would be good for PB to (not necessarily in order of importance): 1. implement resizing of controls at design-time on an object to which they are attached when the object is resized 2. reflect, at design-time, visual attribute changes on visual custom objects at design time. 3. re-implement the proxy object. 4. have an in-built resource manager for images, sound files, etc. This would take away a lot of frustration when deploying a project and you want to organize resource in different folders. Regards.
 
 
Very good tools for what it does. Unfortunately the market is driving us to open source web developement.
 
 
PB server as a RAD tool. It can be improved, but if it was perfect Microsoft would buy it.
 
 
Powerbuilder serves our clientserver application excellently. It is an excellent rapid applications development and OOP develpment tool. On technology enhancement, additional XML enhancement could serve us well, including WEB Services integration. Note that we are an EAServer user developing those applications in JAVA, but using some components from the PB clientserver interface.
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Given a knowledgeable PowerBuilder developer, a clientserver application can be created quicker and with the most features compared to any other clientserver development tool available. The key is to find somebody who has good programming techniques and understands the concept of modularity and object oriented design within their applications.
 
 
Although I am only maintaining old applications written in powerbuilder I still believe that it is a very good tool. Currently our department buys already developed applications so we are no longer doing our own development except using the tools provided with the purchased package.
 
 
PowerBuilder is the most productive application development tool I have used in my 25 years of programming
 
 
I personally enjoy working in Powerbuilder and have for 10 years. However, our company has a very small IT shop and has decided to go .NET. I hope to investigate the possibility of using DataWindow.NET but have not yet done so.
 
 
I have been developing apps with PB since version 3.0 and have made a good living using PB. It would be really nice if Sybase would work on getting the platform really stable instead of changing icons on the ide and calling it a new release. Granted Sybase has incorporated a lot of new features and functionality but every contract that I have been on and working with PB the standard answer when something occurs thats just Powerbuilder""
 
 
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. LONG LIVE POWERBUILDER.
 
 
Using it for 8 years, still learning its features.
 
 
Best RAD I ever worked with.
 
 
Moving off PB and moving to .NET
 
 
Unfortunately, PB didn't make it. It will slowly be vanished and replaced by fat on the market" technologies. PB is now a niche, which poses risk to large enterprize developments."
 
 
PowerBuilder will be more dead than it is now.
 
 
PowerBuilder is the best tool in it's class.
 
 
We love PowerBuilder. It has served our organization very well. We are considering expanding our use of the product in other divisions of our company. However, there are two areas that are really hurting us that I'd like to mention: 1. Your lack of marketing for PowerBuilder creates huge problems for us in terms of recruiting as well as our customers' perception of our technology. I'm getting tired of defending Sybase and your products to the community. You need to take responsibility for getting your success stories out there. 2. Since you wrote your own memory manager (after PB7), our customers have struggled mightily in terms of memory consumption. You create an object then destroy it, you don't get your memory back. You introduced PB_POOL_THRESHOLD environment variable for backwards compatibility with your old memory manager but from what we can tell, it doesn't work. You really, really need to fix this. If we destroy an object, we need the capability of getting the memory back immediately. Please, please fix this.
 
 
PB is probably the most powerful language out there. It is sad that they are letting Microsoft squash them. We switched to C# for new development mainly because we needed grid tools PB was not providing. But everything takes so much longer!
 
 
Our primary goal in 2006 will be to deploy the Russian version of our primary billing application in Russia. PB 10 provided the Unicode support to convert our program from a single language to a multi-linqual application and, at the moment, we have no plans to develop any Web apps using PB (we currently use ASP for all of our web programming).
 
 
The company is split into two divisions. These answers are from just my division. The other division has more developers and will be sending you there information.
 
 
If only we can convert PB apps and not tie them to EA Server, it will be great.
 
 
I wonder what the future of PowerBuilder would be if it was moved to open source. As it is, my current client is migrating away from it :(
 
 
Go .NET or bust!
 
 
Poor Sybase has never attempted to even market PowerBuilder. What a shame that such a good development tool, hasn't had any marketing in years.
 
 
The Marmeting group at Sybase need to seriously market PB10g in a better way than earlier. PB lost its charm after Poersoft sold the company, mainly because of marketing! And eventually the developer community was hit. Bad marketing shopuld not cause harm to Developer Community. Sybase corporation is also hit by this bad marketing in the past.
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Needs good marketing. PB would have been no 1 tool, if Microsoft had bought!
 
 
PB is not very popular in Quebec.
 
 
The development evironment can be unstable if the target is tool large. Also the handling of Window GUI objects can be trouble some to handle. I like the tight" integration with Oracle database"
 
 
If it works, and from what I hear it does, I don't understand why they don't push APPEON more. We're almost afraid to touch it, even though it could help us, because lack of marketing translates to lack of confidence. What is up with their MARKETING? Powerbuilder is a great product, but they hide it under a bush.
 
 
Final Exe build size reduction or run time library avaialability on th web like Java run time when the user clicks on a PB app. Better integration woth PLSQL (like creating a dw based on a ref cursor (out) etc) Better UNICODE support for multi-lingula apps
 
 
Would like to hear more information about the future and what is new with powerbuilder.
 
 
Powerbuilder is good programming language and should be marketed more aggressively.
 
 
Powerbuilder is great, but I wish that Sybase would aggressively market it, because as a developer it is hard to find work as a PB developer; most companies have never heard of it, and it makes it hard to stay excited about the long term prospects of being a PB developer!
 
 
I am the only application developer in my company that still uses Powerbuilder. Microsoft .Net is now the preferred software of choice. I will be maintaining current applications in Powerbuilder only.
 
 
Due to the lack of linux support, we plan on moving to the Eiffel development environment.
 
 
Deleting ancestor menu items is still a pain in the butt. Why doesn't the PFC ever evolve?
 
 
To improve PB's acceptance as a development tool, Sybase needs to try mainstreaming this product. Push universities to use PB to teach Object Oriented Programing concepts.
 
 
GUI of developed programs could use updating. Tighter integration with .NET (NOT just DataWindow .NET). More programming like useage--less dependence on objects in design environment. Creation of a variable for a menu associated with a Window to allow manipulation versus manipulation of the ONE created.
 
 
We are waiting for PowerBuilder 10.5 to be released. We hope that Sybase will keep the promise to implement Web Service Proxy Client with digital cert.
 
 
I really loved Powerbuilder as a development tool, unfortunately as a consultant, my clients, if they even use Powerbuilder, only use it for exisitngmaintaining applications, not new development. To have a more advancing career and not be stuck in maintenance mood, I have needed to focus my skills towards other development tools just as .Net. I would love Powerbuilder to have a strong comeback some day.
 
 
Improve stability and reliability
 
 
I have earned my bread and butter being a Powerbuilder Developer for 10 years. I am indebted to Powerbuilder. It is such a great user friendly tool.
 
PowerBuilder is definitely a nice tool to work with DataBasee. But when it comes to the matter of developing Web based applications it lacks a bit compare to giants like Java and .Net. I personally except some more advanced features in powerbuilder as far as Web based applications are concerned.
 
 
PB is a strong tool, we hope it continues to survive. .Net support is a non issue for us. Java and PHP support as well as Linux is important.
 
 
PB 10 very unstable
 
 
Sybase devrait faire plus d’efforts pour supporter PowerBuiler en France. En tant que développeur PowerBuilder nous voulons plus de support en français (informations techniques, forums, formations...), plus de communication autour de PowerBuilder (conférences, informations et même publicités…) pour dynamiser le marché du développement sous PowerBuilder.
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I think Powerbuilder will become a no longer used product unless Sybase concentrates on two things: 1. Ability to transparently move an existing Application to the web. 2. Do a better job at Marketing, I never hear much about activities concerning Powerbuilder, at least in Houston. Must a forgotten city.
 
 
Falta mejorar la parte de desarrollo web
 
 
PB while once an excellent product has fallen so far behind the times it is virtually useless. PB 9.0 is so buggy and crashes so often it is extrememly frustrating to use. All of his can't wait till we migrate all of our apps to .NET.
 
 
Powerbuilder is becoming the Legacy tool.
 
 
Product advt is required
 
 
PB is excellent product for client-server. Still not there to my liking for web apps, and I'm quite concerned that it never will be. DW.net (v1.5) is so full of holes and has such a ludicrous amount of overhead (including the temporary files created on the server that don't ever get cleaned up). I had a simple one-page app that took an awful lot of workarounds just to get running. So many, that I abandoned dw.net and went back to Cold Fusion.
 
 
A very flexible tool with a moderate to easy learning curve for building interesting, detailed and functional Client Server applications and Web Reports.
 
 
We have had great success using Appeon to convert our PB applications to run on the Web!
 
 
Though PowerBuilder has been and still is the best RAD tool, it's marketing has been very poor. Current trend has been towards maintaining existing applications and moving out to microsoft tools. A better Marketing strategy is a must for PowerBuilder to survive.
 
 
Sybase needs to be leading the curve with PowerBuilder in technology NOT following it. They need to make it a strategic advantage to use PowerBuilder over .NET otherwise, why use PowerBuilder since we now have DW .NET.
 
 
Will PB 11's C# emitter save PowerBuilder from the clientserver graveyard? That is the question. The ability to easily integrate existing PB code with C# will be a major determining factor for us.
 
 
Still an outstanding and productive tool. Too bad it's also one of computing's most misused tools. There is a lot of horrible PowerBuilder code out there.
 
 
There's nothing particularly wrong with the product - but I NEVER see any marketing for it....
 
 
We use Appeon for PowerBuilder for Web Enablement and new Web Development.
 
 
Mgt here is sold on Microsoft .Net so it is a challenge to get them to even upgrade our PB version as we've been stuck on PB7 for yrs.
 
 
Need ability to generate nonvisual service objects in .Net ASAP. Don't want to wait for full visual .net implementation.
 
 
Love using Powerbuilder, just sad that management does not see how valuable it is. We will still be using it for at least the next 2 years, but after that, who knows?
 
 
Please improve client-server functionalities and minimize web integration development
 
 
Powerbuilder foundation classes has to be documented and to be made more structured like .net classes. PB also should give us the opportunity to write classes and thereby GUI's will be generated. In a one page all GUI script classes should be displayed. this makes classes to be read in original way.
 
 
Web development should be user friendly and should support IIS web deployement with datawindow compatibility.
 
 
I've been laid off from (PB) work because my ex-company decided to outsourced software development to India.
 
 
There never was anything quite like PowerBuilder a decade ago and there is nothing quite like it even today. Web DataWindow is an excellent technology that needs to further include all native client DW functionality by supporting other events and user defined buttons.
 
 
Powerbuilder has been a stable development evironment for years. I would like to use .NET but still use PowerScript to access all the .NET api call.
 
 
Sybase takes too long to deliver for the developers. You can spot a PowerBuilder 10.5 Application from the International Space Station. We're leaving PowerBuilder for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Sybase has run the product into the ground.
 
 
Well, I love working with powerbuilder in the past 4 years, but when I know about .Net, I said to myself, Microsoft will any other competitor in the same intrest, like PB, Flash (with xaml) ... Unless they struggle to keep their market boundry, for my opinion Datawindow.net was a succesful move from sybase, but there are may area need evolving ... Thanks and best regards
 
 
Great tool to help application building.
 
 
Though PB is a powerful tool, Why is n't so popular as other tools?
 
 
PB is the best Windows development tool still. But it is not a preferred web development platform.
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We missed the web curve ! We are about missing the mobile curve with PKB too... Still waiting for the .NET integration. And many customers are migrating to Java. It's high time that Sybase fought back in PB...
 
 
Enjoy working with the product.
 
 
Make the license less expensive.
 
 
It is behind in the visual presentation for menus, tabs and graphs.
 
 
In my opinion, PowerBuilder is still a strong development tool. However, Sybase hurt the product some years ago when it attempted to concentrate on consulting instead of improving the product. I would love to see a stronger push by the company to market it's multi-platform development abilities. In the industry, PowerBuilder is seen as a dying development tool and not a growing one. I don't know if this perspective can be reversed.
 
 
Estoy interesado en conocer e interartuar con el desarrolo de aolicaciones en powerbuilder, si me pueden hacr llegar una licencia demo y alguns ejemplos para desarrollarlos y poder visualizar la funcionalidad de la herramienta. Muchas gracias por su colaboracion. Alvaro Montoya C. amontoya@comfama.com.co
 
 
Needs an overhaul in several areas. For instance, debugging (data windows especially). Another: Why do PBDs exist? In the presence of source control systems, they have no positive function at all.
 
 
PB definetely, great RAD tool to work with, stands tall from a developer prespective (atleast for me), but couldn't impress my clients. everybody knows VB is, when I say PB, soon the question arises, what is PB ? nowadays most of developers are moving out of PB, and hard to find a good PB resource.
 
 
We are not getting PB material (like PB Books etc...)
 
 
Marketing by Sybase required more.
 
 
sdkgqsgklmlk
 
 
I love PB and support it for more than 10 years. I also love PFC. That's why I want you to change your mind about PFC open source support. It is not only a script library but also proves the power of PowerBuilder and Datawindow. Thanks.
 
 
PowerBuilder needs the following: Rich text edit style for datawindows. Fade and blend effects for all objects datawindow controls. Ability to create polygons in datawindows. If it had the above, I would give it a 10 instead of an 8!
 
 
need stronger emphasis on Java support (over .NET) + better graphics and stronger, more consistent internationalisation support (right-to-left, mirroring, fonts, calendar) alongside Unicode
 
 
No comments this year ! So far so good !
 
 
My life would be miserable without the datawindow :)
 
 
PB is a strong tool, wishes more people would use it instead of .net
 
 
Hope one day Multilingual ascpect will be within powerbuilder (actualy we use the Translation tool kit, but the tool is not good enough for a big application).
 
 
Datawindow (XML) improvements
 
 
While I still have a high regard for core (client-server) PB functionality, it has never convinced with its wider offerings. While I am sad to give it up personally, it is losing ground in my company and I think it's best hope is in .NET integration.
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On moving from PB 6.5 to 9, mostly it has been a major improvement, but there are some let-downs. When an object goes from invisible to visible, it is now disabled, for example. Also some things are hard to find.
 
 
I love PB so much that, I just hate to code with other tools!
 
 
During our 5 years of development in Powerbuilder, we have have repeatly come up againest Flaws, issues or restrictions placed on us by Powerbuilder. The IDE has proven to be unstable, and we've suffered countless times from our Application behaving differently when compiled to when its tested from within the IDE.
 
 
Goodbye PowerBuilder... you are clinging on for dear life, but your nails are slipping towards the edge. It's been a ride. You won't be missed. FATAL ERROR! Powerbuilder will now close.
 
 
I am leaving this company to become consulting independent.
 
 
We have now used PB since 1993 and are very pleased. The best tool in the world.
 
 
Please focus on the desktop capabilities and forget about all this WEB stuff (except the internetResult object). In my company we use PowerBuilder as a thin client communicationg to a WEB server via the internetResult object, and it works just great.
 
 
Lot of bugs ...
 
 
I would like know all on integration of PB and Web.
 
 
Mostly using Powerbuilder for our older clientserver legacy systems.
 
 
The world has become very confusing with all sorts of web technologies. Gotta be web enabled! Why? Whats wrong with standard client server? We have built large bespoke long standing client-server applications that are ever growing. The paranoia about moving to web" can have a very negative impact on an otherwise very viable standard client server application. Moving to EAServer just seems like more complexity of the environment."
 
 
Needs money, resources, marketing. Needs money, resources, marketing. Needs money, resources, marketing. Needs money, resources, marketing....
 
 
First off, please do not drop support of PowerBuilder, I still believe that it is the best client-server application development environment around. Even .NET does not compare. On that note, I think improvements in it's integration with other tools and also low-level enhancements (like user defined enumerations, and possibly also bit level operations) would be very beneficial. Recently, I had to implement the AES encryption algorythm for a client, and had no choice but to resort to using Visual C++ to implement a DLL for external calling by PB because PB could not run the algorythm fast enough because of the lack of bitwise manipulations in PB. We love the datawindow here, there is nothing better. The .NET datagrid simply does not compare, and any improvements to the datawindow.net control would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
 
 
Need better graphing, especially ability to choose color order of linesseries. Ability to write to pdf without ghostscript third party tool. Even better, ability to export reports to MS Word.
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PowerBuilder is rapidly losing it's appeal. Microsoft .NET is the better tool and priced correctly. Sybase continues to do a poor job in pricing and marketing it's product. In addition, PowerBuilder developers are hard to find, which makes the product less appealing.
 
 
From the point of marketing, Sybase didn't bother to market a good product, instead focusing on mobile wireless computing.
 
 
Powerbuilder is dying a slow death due to Sybase's failure to market the product. Sybase apparently sees integration with Microsoft as a way to enhance the product, but beta testers do not concur. PowerBuilder 10.5 is weak to say the least, doesn't have significant upgrades, and is like PB10, very little for most customers to choose from. Like General Motors, PowerBuilder's demise is inevitable UNLESS Sybase actually puts some effort into improving the product. While PB still is the best and most enjoyable development tool to use, it definitely needs a major overhaul to get it back to the top or even into contention again.
 
 
With Windows Vista just around the corner, PowerBuilder should be planning right now, to prevent a repeat with what happend with Windows XP.
 
 
powerbuilder is great..!
 
 
There should be a better plan towards the future. The talk abould discontinuation gets very annoying. A decision to stop or to continue makes is a lot easier to plan for the future.
 
More stability of PB is requestednecessary!
 
 
PowerBuilder has great potential but suffers from strange marketing decisions like the ones about distributed componants, added, removed, replaced by another solutions with costs... Sybase should listen more to PB devs, who keeps PB alive and adress old knowns bugs an irregularities in PB.
 
 
We need urgently connection from PocketBuilder to MSSQLServer!!! It would also help to have direct connection to EA Server.
 
 
Problems with components in EAServer when using database access should be solved. The alternative is bind the object to one CPU ans ocassionally fails.
 
 
We are missing a 'indenter' for script: after copiing script fro another script, we need to reindenter the whole script
 
 
PB 9.0 build 8565, no es una versión estable se cae continuamente, la integración con SCC, es compleja.
 
 
Marketing should be strenghen,I can not say more,powerbuilder marketing is a mess, we hope sybase take the dealership from BlueExpress,and more free trainning should be offered
 
 
Long Life to PB!
 
 
For a while, I was worried PB was fading away. Now, I use it at work, I contract using it, and I'm writing my own software with it. PB10.5 enhancements are exciting, but PB11 looks to be AWESOME. Anything Sybase can do to allow me to program in PB but distribute it in various ways is appreciated.
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It is still the most comprehensive and productive tool for developing CS applications and can be a wonderful tool for developing web applications regardless of which web architecture is employed....what is seriously missing is a push from Sybase regarding marketing and resources.
 
 
Starting working with WebDataWindowControl (using ASP.NET and DataWindow.NET 1.5), I was disappointed how many limitation it has: no Filtering, no SaveAs, no most of events and functions, no movingspreading capabilities for columns of Grid style, etc. If .NET compatible version of PB have similar limitations, it won't be that we all are waiting...
 
 
Long term utilisation of PowerBuilder really dependant on roadmap for development, and integration with .net to allow reuse of components between our .net applications, plus how long is sybase going to be committed to supporting conventional client-server development on powerbuilder?
 
 
I just love PB. It's the best language I've used in all my 30 years of programming.
 
 
1)There remains so many bugs in new release. 2)Intellisense should be there in development user interface. 3)Powerbuilder should be able to create .net assembly. 4)Very tight integration with .NET 2.0 is needed.
 
 
For PBNI, please add Borlanc C++ builerDelphi interface.
 
 
PB has to improve the IDE environment, especially on the autoscripts, which .NET has offer, that will further cut down the development time. Datawindow report painter (design environment) also need to be improved to suppose guidelines.
 
 
Less docbooksguidetutorialhelpexampleconsultant on PB's 3 tier application development. PB <--> EAServer. Extreamly less info on PBWF (PowerBuilder Web Framework).
 
 
In our country, have problem with book translate to Indonesian language. So, it is make we have a problem for new skill for HOW TO with new PB (for instan ; i donk know develope application wit PB 6 or more becouse i have no reference to guide me for it)
 
 
PB is best for Client server based application but not for web based. There are a lot area where PB can be enhanced specially for web based application. So try to look from web point of view. Hopefully we can use PB for web based application development, if PB can provide us good web based solution. Best of luck.
 
 
Please not too much using resources
 
 
Added in example code : - smart-card - barcode - RFID - RS-232 - UTP etc.
 
 
option to formatted report to text file, to export formatted report to excel and lots of other queries
 
 
option to formatted report to text file, to export formatted report to excel and lots of other queries
 
 
Marketing of PowerBuilder should be developed.
 
 
I really like working with PB, but I don't see many companies going for it in present times. I think Sybase should market PB aggressively and improve it to bring back the lost glory, once it had in Client Server applications and also incorporate the multi tier technologies to make it compete against other tools like .NET and J2EE
 
 
Please promote more of PB. You should market it well. Ideal target are companies moving towards .Net. Sell and promote the .Net related features of PB
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It is good tool for data centric application
 
 
Great software and improving. We use it mostly for clientserver applications as it is most powerful in that segment. Plan to use its web features in the near future.
 
 
PB10 works differently under different operating systems Example:- disabling fileds, hot keys doesnt work properly under XP. where as PB9 works fine. I observe some features which are useful in earlier versions are not supported by earlier versions, I feel that should not be the way if I am right. It should be robust and versatile too. Thank You Best Regards Gopal
 
 
PB was such nice front end GUI tool for rapid application development, but due to lack of support and marketting, PB is now almost out of market or no new prokects are comming in PB, whatever existing projects are there, even companies are thinking of migration to some other technology, at least this is the situation in INDIA.
 
 
Market it properly
 
 
I have worked on almost all the version of PB and regard it the most user friendly. Sybase definately needs to look at enhancing its capabilities so that it can stand a chance against technologies which are more suited for WEB development.
 
 
THis is the the Best tool I ever worked on for the database applications
 
 
PowerBuilder is still the best for clientserver and desktop applications and maybe at par with other tools in Web applications. More POWER to the PowerBuilder team...
 
 
We really hope that Sybase will make DataWindow available in Java.. Not need to be full Java, .NET way just nice. Doesnt to be full OOP. if Sybase not interested, Sybase probably can lets others developers develop the client's frontend tier . Well, dont mind if undisclosed licence was used. Thanks
 
 
PB itself is not enough to respond today's requirement anymore, unfortunatelly.
 
 
PowerBuilder,good tools
 
 
Provide a flexible things to develope web application instead of complicated.
 
 
too late ....