Enhancements Section

Over 85% of the high vote value enhancements are implemented

The panel consisted of (or was supposed to consist of):

Jonathan Baker
John Strano
Dimitri Volkman
Dave Dichman
Loren Corbridge
Evan Ireland
Ian Thain

For some reason, Jonathan Baker wasn't able to make it.





Bryan Enochs of ISUG demonstrated new ISUG web site.

The following enhancements were discussed:

• Sarbanes-Oxley: John Strano mentioned the open source PFC security service, but the person that asked the question indicated that it wasn't good enough. After some discussion, the general consensus is that it was more than just a development tool issue, there were database column access issues, auditing, etc. as well.



• DataWindow.Net: It should support for GetFullState, SetFullState: John Strano referred to the EAF framework that is shipped with PowerBuilder now that has options to transmit the data and state information by other means.



• Drop Down Calendar edit style: The time value should also display and be editable on the drop down.



• Treeview Datawindow: Should only retrieve each level as its being accessed, rather than doing the retrieve for all levels at once.



• Nested DataWindows: Should allow data to be access between levels.



• DataWindow Export to Word: One person indicated they were having problems exporting data from a DataWindow to Word. Another user offered to help them with that offline.



• PowerDesigner: Mike Nicewarner wants to have it available on the PocketPC.



• DataWindow: One person wanted to have the system tell him what object is causing an extra page and the end of a report.



• PowerBuilder built in wizards: A user complained about the wizards not giving them options that are applicable all the time. Like a component wizard that forces the user to select from a base PowerBuilder class rather than an inherited object. The user wanted some control over the presentation of the dialog. Evan Ireland suggested that they might provide a template for dialogs.



• PowerBuilder Resize: A user complained about the lack of an autoresize capability within PowerBuilder. Dave Dichman suggested that something like the multi-orientation layout painter in PocketBuilder might help.



• PowerBuilder Deployment: One user complained about PowerBuilder not handling deployment. They wanted some capability to auto-deploy to all their users. John Strano indicated that now would be a good time to provide input on the smart client deployment methodology that Sybase is working on.



• PowerBuilder Resize: A user suggested a layout manager approach to handling different screen sizes. Reed Shilts talked about the multi-orientation layout painter that they're adding to PocketBuilder. He indicated that he and the PowerBuilder folks were "intimate" and they could work it into PowerBuilder. Terry Voth indicated that the PFC resize service has been decoupled from PFC and is available.



• List View DataWindow Style



• Open Source PFC: A comment was made about the PFC and it's open source status. There was concern that it was viral, and that it wasn't supported. I indicated that it wasn't viral because it uses the lesser version of the open source library.



• PowerDesigner metadata: A user indicated that having PowerDesigner options in the registry was an issue because a company wanted to force some consistency across their designers. Dave Dichman indicated that there are some options to push out registry information at login.



• PowerDesigner source control: A user asked about storing data models in a source control system rather than the repository. Mike Nicewarner indicated that the issue is that the models have a different life cycle than individual applications.



• PowerBuilder Voice Recognition: One user asked about users now needing to be able to do data entry through voice recognition. Alex Whitney user recommended ScanSoft (formerly Dragon Naturally Speaking).



• PowerDesigner Reporting: One user mentioned that PowerDesigner reporting is limited to a particular model. Dave Dichman noted that it is possible to do reporting directly against the repository using third party tools and that they may add that capability into the product.



• Smart Clients: Dawn Browne-Eyes asked about smart clients, particularly on how you access the database. John Strano discussed smart clients for a while, including using web services for data access.



• DataWindow GetFullState/SetFullState: Alex Whitney asked if thought had been given to an XML version of GetFullState/SetFullState. Sybase indicated that they had been thinking of it.



• PowerBuilder messaging service: One person asked about adding support to PowerBuilder for messaging services. John Strano asked if anybody else had asked for that. Reed Shilts indicated that he had. Evan Ireland indicated that the EJBConnectionObject could be slightly modified to accomplish that.

The only issue I had with the enhancement section is that people were continuously told "good idea, post it as an enhancement request on the ISUG web site". All these folks could have done that without having to invest an 1.5 hours of there time to show up for this session first thing in the morning. I think that an ISUG member should have been adding the good suggestions (or all suggestions) into the ISUG enhancement section while the session was going on.