New to Powerbuilder and Overwhelmed

[SYoung9]

Hi everyone, new Powerbuilder developer here. As the title states, I'm kind of overwhelmed with what I need to do, and hopefully I can get some good information.

Basically, I've taken over the IT reins at my company since the last guy flipped off the owner and walked out. However, he developed the entire software system we used and did it in Powerbuilder 7. So now I get to go through and try to figure out what this does.

I bought a reference book, but it hasn't helped me too much yet. The company won't pay for classes, and I doubt they even have PB7 classes anymore.

So I suppose this is a "Hi everyone" post, along with where I can find some good beginner-level information on how to make and edit Windows and the Database we run on.

Thanks in advance.

 

[vadnagra]

There are a lot of basic PB tutorials online. Search in Google for 'Powerbuilder tutorial' or something like that. The Sybase site itself has a good help tutorial - here is the link

http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.help.pb_10.5/title.htm

And don't worry about pb 7 to 10 - basically its all still the same But a word of caution - Sybase is not supporting even PB 9 any more -so if you plan to keep your applications, you better upgrade.

I have been working in PB for the last 12 years and once Sybase stops supporting their own versions, you should upgrade !

I have a (I think its a PB7) book which you can have if you like - but I will have to check which version it is. But its not a beginners level book - its more on PFC's if I'm not mistaken.

 

[SYoung9]

Hi, thanks for the reply =)

Well, I know the last guy ATTEMPTED to upgrade to PB8 when it came out back in the day (probably back in my HS or early college days) and it doesn't work. I've seen it and it's a mess. So he kept with PB7, which is pretty much purring.

I think the book I have is "Powerbuilder 7 Unleashed." I kind of know what's going on, but I'm a Usability/HCI person and not a programmer, so it's slightly rough.

Thanks for the offer of the book, too bad I don't know what a PFC is yet. Maybe once I figure that out, the book will be more helpful.

I'll check out the help topics, maybe something will click for me.

Thanks again.

 

[mbalent]

What database are you running your apps on?

Matt

"Nature forges everything on the anvil of time

 

[DilbertPCer]

We skipped PB 8.0 ( because it seemed to have problems ) and migrated our applications from PB 7.0 to PB 9.0 fairly easily ; except that the Interactive Development Environment changes between PB 7 and PB 9.0 .
Therefore, in that case you should study 9 instead of 7 .
Consideration also should be made to upgrade to PB 10.5 , either immediately or fairly shortly. 10 and 11 ( which is to be released shortly ) are more web enabled. You might consider a 7 to 9 conversion and then a 9 to 11 later on.
PB 10 is Unicode compliant whereas PB 9 is still DBCS; so that would be easier for you initially to upgrade to PB 9.0.

Try to obtain the book the "Definitive Datawindow" second hand; as it is out of print. It has a lot of good information in it and you will be able to use it as a reference.
It does not purport to teach PB programming as many do; but is intended to be a study in how to use the Datawindow - the main database connection for your windows within your applications.

I'm certainly no expert; but I have migrated from 6.5 to 7.03 to 9.02 and am presently working on a migration to PB10.0 ( wish it was 10.5! ) . I'm also a fair programmer; so this is my genuine advice.

 

[DilbertPCer]

Forgot to say-

Once you install the plain vanilla version of PB out of the box - - - say PowerBuilder 9.0 .

Then you should immediately go to the Sybase website and install the latest EBF's for that version.

That's why my Powerbuilder versions were 9.02 and 7.03 -
because we had installed the patches.
This will change your "Build" number from that origianlly installed to the latest.

 

[abcdefgqwerty]

I love how companies simply force everyone to upgrade now instead of letting people choose. They know no one cares to upgrade so they just force everyone to do it instead.