Upgrade from ver 7.0 1

[bigbillmac]

I am currently using ver 7.0 - with the latest fixes and I have to say this version has been a bit of a nightmare, compared to the stability of 6.5. Thankfully the generated programs seem to be fairly stable but the IDE is always bombing.

I am using win2000, so this may be an issue.

My question is that I now need to upgrade from ver 7.0 and I guess I can only upgrade to ver 8 or 9 and that 10 would be a new purchase. I use the Enterprise version, as I need its extra connectivity, so the upgrade price is not trivial.

Please, can anyone compare version 8 or 9 to ver 7.0 - mainly in terms of stability.

Bill

 

[mbalent]

If you need XML capability you need to go to either 9 or 10 (and I would skip 9 in this case).

Version 8.0.3 build 9838 has been pretty reliable for me. I haven't done any active development in 7 in over 2 years so I can't really compare.

My system is win2000 with all service packs/etc loaded connecting to SQL Server 2000 database via OLE DB.

 

[bigbillmac]

No, XML is not really an issue and if it was it would not be a great issue to write what's required with PowerScript anyway.

My main issue is that ver 7.0 is now unsupported by Sybase and as far as I can see has been for quite some time. And, as I said in my first post the IDE is very flakey - very flakey.

I sometimes find that I will run up the progran currently under development and things will just not work - ie things I haven't even been working on and were working OK before. If I then exit PB7 and reopen it then usually things are OK but sometimes it needs regening. Sometimes even links don't work, for example, open(w_customers) opens up something completely different.

It never happens on the compiled version, luckily enough, but it wastes a lot of time.

There are even times when it seems to corrupt code and I have export and import some modules.

It seems that it must have some internal table which gets its knickers in a twist and from there on all hell breaks loose!

With the Sybase upgrade policy I can (I think its still the same) upgrade 2 versions along, if I want to go further I have to pay the full price.

As I said I need the full Enterprise version because I need direct connectivity (not ODBC) to MS SQL Server (Best product MS ever produced) and lower end versions do not do this. All of the other stuff you get with Enterprise is really not required and for my part is a complete waste of money, if I want to do web programming I would use Java servlets - its a no-brainer really.

With all this in mind I would like to go to version 9, so I don't have to upgrade again for a while. If ver 10 is out now then ver 8 will not be supported any more.


Bill

 

[mbalent]

Go for version 10 over 9. I use 10.0.1 build 5502 and it has worked so far. Earlier v10 builds had some issues. Native MS SQL drivers are not supported in this version; you will need to go with OLE DB (or some other method) - but you would have to do this anyway if you wanted to take advantage of some of the newer features of SQL Server 2000 (varchar 8000 for example).

Another 'selling' point of v10 is you get datawindow .Net which may prove useful in the future.

 

[bigbillmac]

Thanks for the info!

From your posts can I take it that you are a MS SQL Server user too?

If so can you tell me how to access image fields please.

Bill

 

[bigbillmac]

Hi,

Question for mbalent, I hope you are still watching this.

I have now upgraded to version 10.0 - they are still not shipping 10.2.

You mention in one of your posts that we now have to use OLE DB to connect to MS SQL Server. Can you tell me what I need to do to connect via OLE DB, or point me somewhere where I can find out please?

Why do they complicate things so much? I am programmer not an OS specialist.

What's happened to PFC - did they finally give up on it? It had some good things in it, but it did produce untidy, non-user friendly stuff - if you chose to use the high level window stuff that is.

Would appreciate any help. (not about the PFC question but the connectivity issue)

Bill