Sybase TechWave 2007: How to Develop a .NET Client/Server Application with PowerBuilder

PowerBuilder & EAServer Bonded Together

Aug. 9, 2007 01:15 PM

PowerBuilder Future Enhancements
At this point, since PowerBuilder 11 can create a WinForm application (see Figure 5), you may ask if we can create a WinForm/smart client application using EAServer 6.1.

PowerBuilder 11 lets you build .NET applications via a translation tool that converts PowerScript to C#. However, the translation tool doesn't have support for converting the generated PowerBuilder EAServer client-side proxies.

So at this point the answer is no. Perhaps a future release of PowerBuilder will address this issue, because there are so many benefits in creating a .NET smart client using EAServer. You could create a robust .NET application that uses a three-tier architecture - a PowerBuilder .NET client, EAServer, and a back-end database.

A .NET smart client application is a new kind of application that combines the power of a desktop application (Rich Client) with the ease of deploying a Web application (Thin Client). The benefits of using a smart client include local resource utilization, Web Services utilization, offline capable, intelligent install and update and client device flexibility.

One very important feature of the smart client is intelligent install and update (see Figure 6). Today's dynamic and fast-moving business environment demands more and more new features developed for current applications that require frequent upgrades and releases to the end users. Smart client handles this troublesome task in a very easy and intelligent way.

There are many applications that are already developed using PowerBuilder and EAServer; it will be great for PowerBuilder developers if we can easily turn an existing PowerBuilder/EAServer application into a WinForm/smart client application (see Figure 7) particularly if no code needs to be rewritten.

Conclusion
With PowerBuilder 11 and EAServer 6.1, you can develop a .NET client/server application in various fashions. You can develop it using the .NET engine to access EAServer Web Services components. You can deploy a PB NVO to EAServer and use a generic .NET client to invoke that. Hopefully, in the next PowerBuilder release, we'll see PowerBuilder .NET client support so PB developers can really develop full-fledged PowerBuilder .NET client/server applications using PowerBuilder and EAServer.

Published Aug. 9, 2007— Reads 15,094
Copyright © 2007 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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About Jian Yang
Jian Yang is a staff software engineer of Sybase. He joined Sybase in September 2000 and has been working in Enterprise Application Server group ever since. From August 1997 to August 2000, he was a senior application developer with Verizon. Jian received his MS in computer science from Bradley University, and his MBA from the University of South Florida.

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