PowerBuilder 10.5 is almost ready, and I'm sure you have a lot of questions about what's in the release and how it can make your job easier. You are also probably wondering why it's called "10.5," how it fits in with our roadmap for PowerBuilder, and what our plans are for tools in general, especially in light of the news that Borland is selling off its IDE product set. I will attempt to answer those questions and more in this update on the latest release.

Let's address these items in reverse, starting with what is probably on everyone's mind - Borland's recent announcement to divest their IDE business. We've had some newsgroup postings and e-mails from concerned customers about our plans and if this affects our future direction at all for PowerBuilder, as well as our focus on tools in general. Rest assured that Sybase is committed to its developer tools. In fact, there are plans for growth in this space with both the PowerBuilder product line as well as in the Java space where we are leveraging the Eclipse platform with our new SODA-based development toolset, WorkSpace.

While Borland has shifted its focus to its ALM strategy, Sybase continues to focus on its core strengths in the database and developer markets. At the same time, we are aggressively concentrating on growth in the mobile space. Our goal is not to reinvent the IDE, but rather leverage the work done by other vendors, then add value by extending and simplifying their offerings. Our WorkSpace plug-ins add unique functionality to Eclipse, and our roadmap for PowerBuilder is to empower you to fully leverage the .NET Framework - and the road that lays ahead with Vista - while simplifying your .NET development experience.

As PowerBuilder implements its support for .NET during the next two releases, and we are able to become a .NET language and generate CIL, the world opens up for PowerBuilder developers. Your ability to work in and contribute to a .NET environment while leveraging your existing code and skill set makes you a tremendous asset. While companies rush to rewrite in C#, as they did several years ago with Java, you can solve business problems today and build upon your existing investment. The other tools in the product line will continue to evolve as well, so you'll be able to leverage the power of the DataWindow in other .NET development environments and extend your applications to mobile users with PocketBuilder.

Why did we call this release 10.5? There are several reasons. The 10.5 release became part of our roadmap in the spring of 2005 when we learned of another delay in the Visual Studio 2005 release from Microsoft. Because core .NET features in the PowerBuilder 11 release were dependent upon functionality, we needed to push out our GA date, again. Since this release also had non-.NET features planned that didn't have this dependency on Microsoft, we decided to pull these features out, add a few more, and deliver them to customers as quickly as we could so they wouldn't need to wait for the 11.0 release. However, we knew that we couldn't just call this new release 11.0 because we have been talking about our .NET plans for quite some time, and we have closely aligned 11.0 with .NET development in the market.

Back in 2002, we announced our four phase strategy for supporting the .NET platform. In this plan, we assigned version numbers to each of the phases. A brief review of the four phase plan is as follows:

• We identified Phase 1 with version 9.0 and support for Web services.
• Phase 2 included DataWindow .NET, which was released at the same time as PowerBuilder 10.0, and we included a copy of DataWindow .NET with PowerBuilder 10.0 Enterprise.
• Phase 3 planned for the support of PowerBuilder NVOs deployed as .NET assemblies with v11.0.
• Phase 4 brought the .NET platform into the PowerBuilder IDE with version 12.

What is this new release of PowerBuilder all about? There are a lot of articles in this month's issue of PBDJ that go into detail about the features, so I won't do that here. Instead I will highlight the features as well as the underlying goal for the release.

PowerBuilder 10.5 is about core functionality and focusing on the needs of the developer. It's about making some key changes, such as implementing long-standing enhancement requests. One example is adding autosize height capability on all the bands of the DataWindow, not just the detail band. This allows developers to more easily create complex forms and reports using the DataWindow. We have also added a new presentation style for the DataWindow - the TreeView presentation style. Another example is heeding the request to update the look and feel of PowerBuilder applications. Our new icons give the product's IDE a completely new look and feel, and you'll be able to leverage these new icons in the applications you build as well. This may sound like a simple change, but it was a significant effort, not a simple image library update. Each image was reviewed and updated to ensure it communicated its meaning properly. More important to most of you, the images were updated to incorporate new technology. Icons look fresh and utilize a transparency layer. Similarly, we have updated the look and feel of our toolbars and menus, so now the applications you build will sport a brand new look. And, you can also use the new DateTme Picker edit mask control and edit mask column type as well.

Another long-time request we addressed in this release is the support for rich text with a new third-party control. With this, PowerBuilder now supports the current spec for rich text in both the RichTextEdit control and the RichText DataWindow.

There's also a lot of new stuff under the covers that you can't see, but you'll be able to utilize. For example, we have retooled our Web services support under the covers to utilize the .NET implementation for Web services. This delivers a more robust, .NET solution, making your job easier and making PowerBuilder more valuable in your organization. We've added support for the BYTE data type and included enhancements to our database interfaces. These include support for Oracle 10g, ASE 15, ADO .NET, and application tracing enhancements.

PowerBuilder 10.5 is a key release for a number of reasons. It's a release that we proactively added to our roadmap to deliver core functionality to you more quickly and to demonstrate our commitment to the product. We originally called this the "Back to Basics" release because with it, our focus has returned to core value, delivering what you need today to get the job done better. Our future plans are to remain on this track, focusing on delivering the features developers need most, addressing your long-standing requests, and, at the same time, evolving the product so it continues to support new technologies as they emerge - without requiring you to incur a learning curve or greatly change how you do your job.

Check out the 10.5 release and take it for a spin, and let me know what you think.