Talk:PowerBuilder

Lost history
This page lost all its edit history when it was moved from Powerbuilder. akaDruid 09:00, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

NPOV issues
A couple of things looked like they violated NPOV. I changed the ones I was sure about. The comment "Of course, to run the above example application, you must purchase and install the PowerBuilder development tool" appears rather inane and un-encyclopedia-like and I think it can be pulled out.


 * I did so. Chip Unicorn 23:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

NPOV and lacking a critisism section
I agree with the content not maintaining a NPOV, the datawindow component is not "famous" unless youi either ask Sybase or a if you believe the marketing hype. Also it falls short when developing big applications with a large number of objects, a compile to machine code can take on the order of hours! It also has a lot of bugs when you want to do any integration work.

I am going to stick my head out and give critique, please feel free to disagree. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TempestSA (talk • contribs) 20:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC).


 * I do not think adding original research with new uncited, non-neutral material is an improvement. Removing "famous" and the "well-suited" bits were good, though. -- JHunterJ 01:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The article only having a "Language Advantages" section is imho, non-neutral. I am a not fond of the language, and I believe the marketing hype around it is aimed more at managers than developers, but to each his own. The section pertaining to the advantages of the language also mentions functionality that all modern languages have (like connecting to a database, consume an ActiveX/COM object etc), even Microsoft Excel can connect to a database and consume an ActiveX/COM object. -- TempestSA 04:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, the DataWindow is "famous" enough for one of the IBM folks to consider it a missing ingredient in AJAX: http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/BobZurek?entry=data_intensive_ajax_applications_the. As for machine code compiles, that's been a thing of the past for a while.  Given that few people use it, I can't see why it would be a major detraction.  I'd also be interesting to hear specifics about the bugginess of the integration API, given that I've used it extensively and it works well for me.  On the other hand, the Advantages section is poorly worded, makes a number of claims for features that are characteristic of any development tool (e.g., ability to call Windows API functions).  It could use an entire rewrite, more along the lines of what is unique about the product. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bruce.a.armstrong (talk • contribs) 04:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

As a career PB developer I see where the original writer was coming from with the "famous" datawindow statement but famous isn't the right word. Anyone that knows PowerBuilder is aware of the datawindow, it is what separated the tool from the rest. It is nearly impossible to find a trustworthy source to verify this, after all who can you trust besides yourself? Someone with better writing skills than me should describe the datawindow as being technologically advanced for it's time. The datawindow defined PowerBuilder and was a major factor in the perceived productivity improvements. The proof is in the lack of ability to find a PB article not mentioning the datawindow. I agree with previous commenter about it needing a re-write, it looks like a pissing contest between the PB evangelists and the PB haters. Good luck with that. Id be happy to offer objective information, however my writing skills are not good enough to tackle this. Otown411 (talk) 15:04, 18 August 2010 (UTC)Otown411

Out of print?
hmm is this OOP? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.88.124.146 (talk • contribs) 21:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC).


 * No. Check the official site and click "Buy Now". -- JHunterJ 11:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

New copies of PowerBuilder (Version 12) are shipping in 2011, five years after the erroneous statement made here in 2006. SAP, the new owner of PowerBuilder has released beta version of Version 12.5 PowerBuilder. What exactly is the unresolved conflict? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Displacedguy (talk • contribs) 03:33, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

History
Some history would be nice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.192.29.10 (talk) 17:17, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I have added history, with a citation of a page maintained by Patrick Lannigan. Prakash Nadkarni (talk) 16:17, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Advertising
This article sounds a lot like an advertising "seriously upgraded" ..."if they were to remain in the market, and they delivered by releasing a major upgrade to PowerBuilder" ..." PowerBuilder has a strong, faithful, and growing customer base who cite the productivity of PowerBuilder over and above competing tools as a driving factor" ...Please clean up and make it more neutral. Thanks--Camilo Sanchez (talk) 19:07, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I've never used PowerBuilder but this criticism from Camilo Sanchez is the most pussified thing I've ever read.

"Air has a strong, faithful, and growing customer base who cite the goodness of breathing air as a driving factor."

"Neutral" doesn't necessarily mean "not positive". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.171.176.113 (talk) 22:20, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The fact that you use the word "pussyfied" shows by definition that you have no idea what you are saying.--Camilo Sanchez (talk) 18:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

-- By DisplacedGuy ---

THE DISPUTE IS RESOLVED It looks to be resolved and article reads neutral and accurate.

Article is Neutral and Accurate: As a career PowerBuilder developer I feel the article is neutral and accurate, though poorly written and needing major clean-up. I believe the problem has been resolved and this article should not be marked as being in conflict or marked as being an advertisement.

Regarding the advertising claim: The "seriously upgraded" and opinionated information has been removed. The wording about the upgrade to version 12 was toned down from "seriously upgraded" to "a major upgrade". The statement about version 12 being a major upgrade is entirely accurate, version 12 was the first version ever to include two interactive design environments (IDE's) the original PowerBuilder IDE and a .NET IDE.

Regarding the claim of OOP or out of use: The claim of PowerBuilder being out of print, and/or out of use is so erroneous that it makes the intentions of the person posting that very suspect. New PowerBuilder development is not nearly as common as stated in the article, however the tool is still used in at dozens of Fortune 100 companies. The list of companies I've worked recently includes mostly Fortune 100 companies and all had one or more PowerBuilder developers supporting or developing applications in PowerBuilder, that list is: Walt Disney World, Lockheed Martin, Time Warner Cable, Siemens, AT&T, Bank of America and the State of Wisconsin, and currently at AT&T. Sincerely, Displacedguy (talk) 04:09, 11 June 2011 (UTC)DisplacedGuy

NPOV ?
The phrase "seriously upgraded" is new to me - and the reference is from Sybase itself. This is just silly. I might have offered my own editorial view as "seriously irrelevant upgrade".

We remove entire articles on innovative programming languages, yet we tolerate this promo ? How long can this stand? In my contract work in telco's and insurance and banking in the past 2 decades in Canada and USA I did not encounter PowerBuilder and seldom encountered Sybase. So those missing citations, from where I sit, need to be added or this advert content deleted.

One PowerBuilder user was the Saskatchewan WheatPool - and it is now defunct, so perhaps they could be used in a citation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grshiplett (talk • contribs) 18:07, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Biased
Through the 1990's I worked for Bell Mobility, who used PB for all cellphone activations, account setup and credit checks etc. Rogers too I believe. Two largest Natural Gas distributers in Ontario also, core systems. Large Insurance co's, banks, retailers all use it.

Given those proposed criticisims you post as "encyclopeidic information", you wouldn't happen to be a salesperson for the "much more useful" (Not) Visual Basic By Microsoft would you? Highly likely IMHO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lengould100 (talk • contribs) 18:18, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Displacedguy (talk) 04:26, 11 June 2011 (UTC)DisplacedGuy I agree with the statements made here by Lengould, that PowerBuilder is still in use and relevant. I listed a half dozen fortune 100 companies that I have worked as a contract programmer doing PB development. The claims by someone that they have not seen it are surely made with motive because PowerBuilder is still used at major companies a simple job search on one of the major job search engines will disprove that persons theory that just because *he* has not seen it, then it does not exist. This entire conflict is a joke really, the only valid problem was some of the wording being too opinionated and that has been resolved. Notice how other claims have no backing, the gentleman who says he's been everywhere and not seen PB or Sybase fails to mention "where" he didn't see it which should raise red flags about the his credibility or motive. I shared real company names because I can back my claims up and they are truthful. Displacedguy (talk) 04:26, 11 June 2011 (UTC)DisplacedGuy

I just have to say that I worked in a Armored Vehicles Manufacturing industry, Saudi Arabia who still uses Powerbuilder for the past 15 years. I am now with Comwave Telecom company, Canada who has been using PowerBuilder for the past 10 years for their core enterprise Billing application. There are lot of features which are still hidden to the world. Many of us dont know PowerBuilder has a built in Integration Services for ETL and a SQL Explorer similar like SQL Management Studio. Here you can connect any SQL server using any type of drivers. The C# and Java language is nothing new but a copy of PowerScript language. Both languages are made easy to learn with the power of C/C++. This what Sybase did some 20 years ago including cross platform development. I think .net framework is just a propaganda and never in the line of cross platform development. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.47.87.129 (talk) 19:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Unicode, 4GL RAD, and DataWindow Facts
This article would be improved by adding facts about these main topics:

Unicode, RAD, and DataWindow.

1. Unicode. Since PB 10, PowerBuilder internally uses Unicode. The database interfaces automatically do conversion to and from ASCII if needed. PowerBuilder has built-in functions to convert from ASCII to Unicode and back. This makes it possible to create multi-lingual applications. PowerBuilder can leverage the Unicode capabilities of SQL Server, for example.

The current article lacks the word "Unicode".

2. 4GL RAD. PowerBuilder is a 4GL RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool. RAD tools are in general designed to achieve greater programmer productivity. In many cases, the same application can be 10 times faster in PowerBuilder than using a 3GL language. Naturally, a RAD will have some things it does extremely well, and other things where it is necessary to use another software component.

The current article lacks the word "4GL" and also lacks "RAD", even though at the bottom it shows Category: 4GL.

3. DataWindow. There is very little information about the DataWindow. The DataWindow is the most distinguishing feature of PowerBuilder. I suggest we add the following:

The DataWindow offers a number of Presentation Styles: - Tabular (ie, rows and columns) - Grid (like Tabular, with movable and resizable columns) - Composite (allows multiple other datawindows to be combined into one) - Label (with built-in templates for virtually all popular Avery sytle labels) - Graph - Rich Text - Treeview - and others.

The DataWindow is both an object which allows data entry, as well as a banded report generator. In comparison, Microsoft Access has a banded report generator, but it does not allow data entry.

The DataWindow includes many advanced features, such as Computed Fields, Conditional Attributes, such as Color, Visibility, and Width. It also has multiple internal buffers, such as the Primary Buffer, which holds the data originally retrieved from the database, the Delete Buffer, which holds data which is logically deleted, but not yet deleted from the Database, and the Filter Buffer, which contains rows which are filtered from View.

There are dozens of functions for the DataWindow, such as RowsCopy, to copy rows from one datawindow to another datawindow (or to the same datawindow), RowsMove, RowsDiscard. Another function, SaveAs, can save the contents of the DataWindow in many different formats, including CSV and PDF (using GhostScript).

The DataWindow can be unit tested, which provides a faster turnaround time for this type of test compared to running the application. In addition, most attributes of the datawindow can be changed in the IDE after the data has been retrieved from the database. This speeds up the turnaournd time for testing.

Sincerely, Victor Reinhart — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.130.44.126 (talk) 16:46, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

pbd
What is ".pbd"? That term redirects to this PowerBuilder article, but I don't see that term anywhere in this article. The WP:R guideline suggests mentioning such redirected terms somewhere in the article, and making them bold. --DavidCary (talk) 03:41, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Criticism section
Not long ago two IP editors added some criticism which seemed not neutral and which was definitely not sourced. Today a third IP editor took out the unsourced negative personal viewpoint and replaced it with an unsourced positive personal viewpoint. Is that really an improvement?

Rather than swamp such a small paragraph with all the weasel-tags that it deserves, I'm just going to remove it. Of course, anyone who wants to find and cite specific, published, verifiable criticisms is encouraged to add them.

Unician &nabla; 09:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

powerbuilder syntax highlighting lost
Since the switch from Geshi to Pygments for syntax highlighting (T85794), support for 'powerbuilder' was unfortunately dropped, as can be seen with the plain text formatting on this page and others such as Exception_handling_syntax. If you want specialised 'powerbuilder' syntax highlight support again, it will need to be added to Pygments. Alternatively, if there is another language which has similar syntax, we can add that as a fallback. John Vandenberg (chat) 21:35, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Two "Features" tabs?
Why are there two "Features" tabs? Maoroh93 (talk) 11:27, 14 September 2020 (UTC)