The Appeon consultants program is worth a look

The Appeon consultants program is worth a look.

They haven't finalized the program yet, but independent consultants and companies could receive the following benefits:

Independant Consultants

• Featured in consultant directory (currently in progress)
• Free versions or copies of all products
• Free technical support for all products
• Free passes to the Appeon Elevate conference
• Early-access to new releases or private betas

Companies

• Featured in partner directory (currently in progress)
• Co-marketing opportunities for lead generation
• Discounts on all versions of all our products
• Free live instructor training for new releases
• Early-access to new releases or private betas

Special pre-order pricing for PowerBuilder 2017

Pre-orders for PowerBuilder are available from now through December 31, 2016 at reduced prices.

ISUG-TECH board member nominations now open

The nomination period is open until 5PM PST November 30th.  Elections will be held December 5th to 9th 2016.  Any member may nominate another member to serve; however, only regular (paid) members may vote in the election.

The following positions are open for a two year term (2017-2018):

• Vice President of Finance
• Vice President of Membership
• Regional Director - North America
• Regional Director - EMEA
• Communications Director
• Social Media Director

Only current board members are eligible to run for either of the Vice President positions.  The list of current board members can be found at http://my.isug.com/board/members.

There are are also two open positions available for the remainder of the 2016-2017 term.

• Regional Director - AP
• Benefits DIrector

Those two positions can be appointed by the current board.  If you are interested in either of those positions or want to recommend someone, please contact one of the current board members.

Another Microsoft "Next Big Thing" technology bites the dust

This time it's LightSwitch.  Two months ago it was RemoteApp.  It must really give .Net developers a lot of second thoughts when the next "big thing" is announced.

I just find this ironic

Remember Steve Job's "Thoughts on Flash"?  Remember the closing statement?

"Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

This just in.  A company called Nexedi is suing Apple.  For what?

"The primary reason for starting this lawsuit is because we hope that it will help Apple to sooner support the latest Web and HTML5 standards on its iOS platform - the operating system used by all iPhones.  Anyone running html5test (http://html5test.com/) on his iPhone will find out that current iOS support of HTML5 Web technologies is lagging behind other platforms."

Preparing PowerBuilder applications for submission to the Windows Store using the Desktop App Converter

What the Desktop App Converter does is create a UWP wrapper around a .Net or Win32 application.  It runs the application within an isolated Windows environment so that any elevated privileges only affect the isolated environment and not the host machine.

Accessing any database from PowerBuilder 12.6 using OData

OData

One of the new features added to PowerBuilder Native with the 12.6 release was support for accessing SQL databases through OData.  A number of database vendors, particularly SAP and Microsoft provide build in support for exposing their databases via OData.  However, what do you need to do if you want to access other databases such as IBM or Oracle?

There are a number of options.  One is to get something like the Progress DataDirect OData Connector or the CData Could Driver.  Another approach, recommended by IBM and Oracle, is to expose the database through WCF Data Services using Visual Studio.Net.  The problem with that approach is that Microsoft (as it often does) has indicated that WCF Data Services has been deprecated in favor of Web API OData libraries.  So instead, we're going to look at a third option, using platform neutral open-source tools to expose any database through an OData service.

Recap of PowerBuilder Future Webcast 5

The recording of the webcast is available at:  www.appeon.com/recordings  The following is my summary of what was discussed.

Calling WCF web services from PowerBuilder Native through a proxy web service

One of the issues with PowerBuilder Native's support for web services is that it is based on ASP.Net Web Services.  That technology, introduced with .Net 1.0, doesn't provide support for anything other than simple XML over HTTP SOAP services.  Microsoft introduced WCF web services in .Net 3.0 to provide support for a much creater variety of SOAP services.  In particular, WCF web services:

• Can be accessed through protocols other than HTTP, such as TCP or named pipes.
• Added support for web services standards such as WS-Security, WS-Addressing, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Coordination and WS-AtomicTransaction.

So what can you do if you need to consume a web service that requires support for alternate protocols, those latter web services standards or both?

PowerBuilder TV Webcast: PowerGen 2016

Automating the PowerBuilder Build Process with PowerGen 2016
Presenter: Phil Wallingford
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 8:00 AM PST (Los Angeles) / 17H00 PM CET (Paris).

An essential tool to automate the building of PowerBuilder applications, it lets you use command line functions to automate the entire build, create libraries from object source. With PowerGen, you can control your builds with predictability and reliability.

PowerBuilder TV Webcast: Bootstrap for PowerBuilder

Bootstrap for PowerBuilder
Presenter: Roland Smith
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 8:00 AM PDT (Los Angeles) / 17H00 CEST (Paris)

Download the source files of a PBT from your source control system and import the objects into empty library files that it creates for you. Follow that up with any rebuilds and regenerates that are needed to get all objects to compile successfully. With PowerBuilder Bootstrap:

• Extract all source code files for a target from a source control system
• Create new library files for a target and import all the object source code files
• Generate a new PBC file for a workspace
• Optimize all libraries for a target
• Compile the executable files for a target and copy to a deployment folder

PowerBuilder TV Webcast: PowerVCS

PowerBuilder Version and Source Control with PowerVCS
Presenter: Phil Wallingford
Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at 8:00 AM PDT (Los Angeles) / 17H00 CEST (Paris)

A web-based solution where repository data resides on a secure Web server and source control functions are accessible with a browser. For those of you who have reached the limits of “PBNative”, who miss Object Cycle, or who have yet to implement a source control system of any description. See how PowerVCS is an ideal solution for locally and geographically distributed development teams.

Future of PowerBuilder webcast - Part 5 - Low Level Roadmap

Part 5 of the Future of #PowerBuilder webcast (Low Level Roadmap) starts at 9:00 AM PST tomorrow (July 28th). If you have not already signed up, you can still do so at http://www.appeon.com/form/form.php?mid=20

PBNISMTP update

I created a 12.6 build of PBNISMTP back in April of 2015 but never updated the downloads or source code.  That's been corrected.

More recently, I moved the project to VS2015.  It has also been updated to the most recent version of CPJNSMTPConnection (3.17). The VS2008 code is still available but will no longer be maintained.

Since CPJNSMTPConnection is dependant on CWSocket I updated that to the latest version as well (3.17),  The new version on CPJNSMTPConnection also no longer references OpenSSL, but instead uses SSLWrappers  and CryptoWrappers

I did have to make one minor change to CWSocket. For some reason, CPJNSMTPConnection was still calling a Delete method on CWSocket that had been removed in the latest version. I added a noop Delete method so that the code would continue to compile.

The only PowerBuilder sample provided is for PowerBuilder 12.6. If you want to use the utility with an earlier version of PowerBuilder you will need to download the C++ source and compile it referencing the PBNI/SDK files for that release.

Note that the PBX files are significantly larger than they were when VS2008 was used to compile them. That's because of a change that Microsoft made in the way files that dynamically link to MFC are compiled starting in VS2010.

Using the XMLSerializer rather than the DataContractSerializer in PowerBuilder.Net WCF web services

By default, WCF services use the DataContractSerializer.   PowerBuilder Classic using ASP.Net web services, which only support the XMLSerializer.  Therefore, if you create a WCF web service using the default settings in PowerBuilder.Net you won't be able to call it from PowerBuilder Classic.

WCF services can be configured to use the XMLSerializer instead.  To do that for PowerBuilder.Net
you'll need to add that option to the WCFAttributes.xml file that PowerBuilder uses to display the options in the IDE.  You should find it in the following location:

<system drive>:\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Sybase directory.

If you add the following into the <Service Attributes> entries:

<ServiceAttribute Name="XmlSerializerFormat"></ServiceAttribute>

Then it will appear in the IDE and you can check it.  Then regenerate the service.  It will now use the XMLSerializer.  At that point you can call it using the PowerBuilder web service client and/or the web service based DataWindow.

Interesting .Net statistics

Telerik's 2016 .Net Developer Report is out.

SDTimes notes that the majority of respondents are using WPF now (46% versus 42% for Windows Forms).  Windows Universal Platform is currently in use by less than 10% of respondents.

Recap of PowerBuilder Future Webcast 4

The recording of the 4th webcast (and the previous 3) can be found at: www.tinyurl.com/newroadmap

This webcast was the high level roadmap.  Normal legal disclaimers apply.

Future of PowerBuilder webcast - Part 3 - App Architecture

Part 3 of the Future of #PowerBuilder webcast (App Architecture) starts at 9:00 AM PST tomorrow (January 19th). If you have not already signed up, you can still do so at http://www.appeon.com/form/form.php?mid=20