Novalys 2003 Worldwide Surveys Results
In 2003, a worldwide survey was carried out
by Novalys about the current and future use of PowerBuilder.
These are the final results.
We would like to thank the 3100 people, who answered this survey from more than 100 countries.
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2003 Worldwide Survey ResultsYou will find below the analysis of the answers to the following questions:
1 . How long will PowerBuilder be used in your company ?
2 . In 2003, will PowerBuilder be used to develop or
maintain applications?
3 . How many developers will use PB in your company in
2004 ? (approximately)
4 . Which PB version do you currently use?
5 . In 2003, do you plan to migrate toward a more recent
PB version?
6 . Which other
technologies is (or will be) used in your company?
7 . Do you use
PB to develop your Web Applications?
8 . As a developer, what is your opinion about PowerBuilder?
9 . Countries and Comments
1) How long will PowerBuilder be used in your company ?
Most
of the people who answered (83%) plan on using PowerBuilder
for 2 years or more than 2 years! This statistic has increased
by 4 points from last
year's survey (79%).
The USA
often have the lead over the rest of the world concerning technical
choices. In this precise case, the forecasts on the of use of PowerBuilder
are almost the same in the USA as in the other countries.
Few
users declare not to use PowerBuilder anymore: the developers who
answered this survey are those who go on using PowerBuilder...
2) In 2003, will PowerBuilder be used to develop or maintain applications?
In last
year's survey, every developer mentioned they were working
on existing applications. PowerBuilder is now a mature tool it was
not a surprise to learn that it was used to support existing applications.
This
year the results are very different. 6% of the participant work
on NEW applications ONLY. They do not have any existing PB applications
at all. Many applications have therefore been started with PowerBuilder
this year.
It is
important to notice that 58% of the respondants use PB for
both existing and new applications which means they continue
to rely on PowerBuilder.
3) How many developers will use PB in your company in 2004 ?(approximately)
The average PB project contains 8.4 developers.
Over 50% of the teams contain between 4 and 20 developers.
PowerBuilder
is still being employed for the "large" projects.
The
results are close to last
year's
4) Which PB version do you currently use?
Please
note the survey includes PB9 in a small proportion as this version
was not yet available at the beginning of 2003.
Therefore
it is not a surprise to see PB8 as the most frequently used
version.
28% of the developers work with PB7 and 21% of them
work with an older version than PB7 (which isn't supported by Sybase
anymore).
5) In 2003, do you plan to migrate toward a more recent PB version?
Moreover 49% of the teams plan to migrate to a more recent
version of PowerBuilder in 2003, which confirms their investment
in PowerBuilder.
Note concerning PB9: PB9, launched in Q2, was starting to be
used during the second semester of 2003. Already 21% of the survey
participants during the last 6 months of 2003 are equipped with this
new version. (8% is the ratio of PB9 users over12 months).
6) Which other technologies is (or will be) used in your company?
It is
important to notice first of all that there are many more answers
to this question this year; companies have a better assessment
of their technical tendencies. They plan to use several tools
simultaneously. Their preferance remains with Java (52%
of answers).
The statistics
concerning Microsoft have increased meaningfully (from 30%
to 47%) since
2002. These results clearly illustrate Microsoft's
investment in the .NET technology.
7) Do you use PB to develop your Web Applications?
Surprise! The use of PowerBuilder is not limited to Client/Serveur
developments:
- 19% of the users already use PowerBuilder to
develop their web applications.
- 50 % of the users plan to develop some of their
web applications, if not all of them, with PowerBuilder in the
future!
The use of PowerBuilder in 2003 shows a real wish to invest in PowerBuilder (a mastered and profitable technology), probably justified by mixed feelings towards new technologies such as Java.
8) As a developer, what is your opinion about PowerBuilder ?
PowerBuilder is an excellent tool. Users are satisfied with it just like
last year: the average mark is around 8/10 and 82% of the users gave it a mark higher than 7/10.
In the
2003 results, all the sections increased:
- 23% gave PowerBuilder the highest mark (between 9/10 and
10/10) against 18%
last year
- only 18% marked the product under 6/10 (against
17% in 2002).
9) Countries and Comments
People from 107 different countries answered this survey!
As expected, American developers are widely represented in this survey.
The high
number of French developers answering this survey is due
to the French origin of Novalys more than to the number of developers
using PowerBuilder in France.
Geographical origin of the answers :
| Country | Total |
| USA | 992 |
| France | 201 |
| India | 169 |
| Canada | 145 |
| Germany | 134 |
| United Kingdom | 94 |
| Australia | 84 |
| Belgium | 83 |
| Italy | 82 |
| Spain | 77 |
| Chine | 54 |
| Austria | 46 |
| Switzerland | 43 |
| Norway | 34 |
| Mexico | 32 |
| The Netherlands | 30 |
| Peru | 29 |
| Philippines | 28 |
| Brazil | 28 |
| Sweden | 26 |
| Israel | 24 |
| Venezuela | 23 |
| Hong Kong | 23 |
| Russia | 22 |
| United Arab Emirates | 21 |
| Denmark | 20 |
| Singapore | 19 |
| Colombia | 19 |
| Argentina | 19 |
| Madras | 18 |
| Chile | 17 |
| South Africa | 17 |
| Polond | 17 |
| Taiwan | 15 |
| Saudi Arabia | 15 |
| Egypt | 14 |
| Indonesia | 13 |
| Greece | 13 |
| Thailand | 12 |
| New Zeland | 12 |
| Costa Rica | 11 |
| Portugal | 11 |
| Luxembourg | 11 |
| Turkey | 10 |
| Ecuador | 10 |
| Guatemala | 10 |
| Korea | 10 |
| Pakistan | 9 |
| Czech Republic | 8 |
| Ireland | 7 |
| Cyprus | 7 |
| Japan | 6 |
| Kuwait | 6 |
| Country | Total |
| Yugoslavia | 6 |
| Lebanon | 6 |
| Uruguay | 5 |
| Finland | 5 |
| Abu Dhabi | 5 |
| Ukraine | 5 |
| Slovenia | 4 |
| Lithuania | 4 |
| Romania | 3 |
| Nigeria | 3 |
| El Salvador | 3 |
| Hungary | 3 |
| Morocco | 3 |
| Paraguay | 3 |
| Sri Lanka | 3 |
| Virgin Island | 3 |
| Bulgari | 3 |
| Oman | 3 |
| Vietnam | 3 |
| Honduras | 2 |
| Malta | 2 |
| Bolivia | 2 |
| Syria | 2 |
| Jamaica | 2 |
| Dominican Republic | 2 |
| Tunisia | 2 |
| Senegal | 2 |
| Cameroon | 2 |
| Armenia | 2 |
| Channel Islands | 1 |
| Iran | 1 |
| Bahrain | 1 |
| Canary Island | 1 |
| Uzbekistan | 1 |
| Guyana | 1 |
| Scotland | 1 |
| Kenya | 1 |
| Jordan | 1 |
| Gabon | 1 |
| Martinique | 1 |
| Algeria | 1 |
| Dubai | 1 |
| Yemen | 1 |
| Antigua and Barbuda | 1 |
| Burkina Faso | 1 |
| New Caledonia | 1 |
| Guadeloupe | 1 |
| Bermude | 1 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina |
1 |
| Latvia | 1 |
| Bangladesh | 1 |
| No Answer | 99 |
| Total | 3095 |
Some Comments about PowerBuilder and Sybase...
690 respondants added a comment.
You can read some of them in English, Spanish and French.