Revisiting Continuous Integration with PowerBuilder 2017, Bonobo Git and Jenkins

In a previous blog post I ran through a example of how to use the new command line compiler feature of PowerBuilder 2017 to perform continuous integration using Jenkins and a Git repository.  One of the "next steps" I referenced in the close of that post was the creation of a plug-in for Jenkins that would make creating the build steps for the project much simpler.

Well, I've created such a plugin.  Or more specifically what I did was take the existing MSBuild plugin and customize it to create a number of plugins to do PowerBuilder compiles instead.

ISUG-TECH Board of Directors Nominations Open

The nomination form for the 2018-2019 elections is now available through November 13th at:

      http://my.isug.com/p/su/rd/survey=5406372e-bf4f-11e7-9104-bc764e10c5fd

ISUG-TECH Annual General Meeting

ISUG-TECH will be holding their annual member meeting on November 8, 2017 at 12:00pm (noon) EST.  This year the meeting will be conducted via webcast. To register, please visit:

        https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1365819227920694019

PowerBuilder User Group Meeting Germany

November 13th and 14th at the Mercure Hotel MOA Berlin https://www.linkedin.com/groups/103059/103059-6323593838392938498

PowerBuilder User Group Meeting Switzerland

November 15, 2017 at the Novotel Zurich City Hotel in Zurich https://www.appeon.com/company/events/powerbuilder-user-group-meeting-switzerland.html

Elevate 2017

Summary

Given that this was the first conference that Appeon had hosted, I thought it went extremely well.  There were a few areas for improvement, which I'll address at the end of this article.  Attendance was good and diverse.  It seemed like there were a significant number of people attending from outside of the United States.   (Appeon later indicated that 24% of the attendees were from outside North America, 4% from Asia, and 10% each from Europe and Latin America).  There was a lot of energy and excitement on the attendees part, and the sessions overall appeared to have been high quality and well attended.  The facilities were great, if a bit small, and the services provided by Appeon to facilitate travel between the downtown hotels and the conference location were a great touch.  If you didn't attend this year I would highly recommend it next year, particularly given we should have some exciting new 2018 features to see next year.

Spell checking in the new PowerBuilder 2017 Rich Text Edit Control

The original Rich Text Editing control shipped with PowerBuilder was based on an OEM of a popular third party control at the time called HighEdit. By the time 10.5 came out though, that control was quite dated and no longer supported by the vendor. As a result, in 2006 Sybase replaced that control with an OEM of another popular third party control called TX Text Control. There are licensing issues with that control though.  So with the release of PowerBuilder 2017 Appeon updated the control again, replacing the OEM of the TX Text Control with an OEM of the TE Edit Control.

The return of browser plugins?

Apparently there is a W3C open standard currently in development called WebAssembly that is "a memory-safe, sandboxed execution environment" for browsers (and non web use).  The binary formatted code in WebAssembly deployment can be parsed up to 20 times faster than JavaScript can be parsed.  While the working group has been focused on providing support for C/C++ a project called Blazor has been developed that provides support for C#.

InfoQ article

Continuous Integration with PowerBuilder 2017, Bonobo Git and Jenkins

In a previous blog post I examined how we could use the Git MSSCCI provider from PB Software in order to use GitHub as a source code provider for PowerBuilder.

In this blog post we're going to take that to the next step, in that we're going to create a build machine separate from our PowerBuilder development machine and then set it up to perform continuous integration.

PowerGen 9.5 for PowerBuilder released

In addition to support for PowerBuilder 2017, the new version offers support for EAS builds, better handling of extended characters in object names and other new features and bug fixes.  For more information, see the release notes.

Configuring PowerBuilder projects to use GitHub for source control

Back in 2003, Sybase introduced CodeXchange, an online forum that allowed developers to share code samples and collaborate on open source projects.  Unfortunately, in 2009 Sybase decided to shut down that system.  The PowerBuilder code samples that had been uploaded tp CodeExchange did eventually show up again in a CodeXchange section of the PowerBuilder wiki on SAP's SCN.  Appeon also obtained permission from many of the authors to post those same PowerBuilder samples on the Code Samples section of the Appeon site.

Hands-on Look at PowerBuilder 2017 Webinar

Hands-on Look at PowerBuilder 2017 Webinar
Friday, June 30th, 2017
9AM to 10AM PDT

A recording of the webcast is now available at:

https://www.appeon.com/developers/library/videos/hands-look-powerbuilder-2017.html

Call for papers for Elevate 2017 now open

The deadline for the call for papers is May 12th.

The conference itself will be at the Harris Conference Center in Charlotte, North Carolina on September 25-27, 2017.

https://www.appeon.com/elevate

Upcoming Appeon Webcasts

Migrate from EAServer to .NET
Tuesday, February 28,  9:00 AM PDT (San Francisco) 
Presenter: Donald Clayton, President of Intertech Consulting

As EAServer is nearing its “end-of-life”, many mission-critical PowerBuilder systems that depend on EAServer need to embark down a migration path.  Intertech Consulting, an Appeon-Certified Consulting Partner, recently completed two successful EAServer migrations. This Webcast will cover strategies and tactics for refactoring the middle-tier PowerBuilder code to .NET. 

Real-Life Mobile Application with Appeon 

Thursday, March 2,  9:00 AM PDT (San Francisco) 

Presenter: Fili Sosa, CEO of Sizes and Colors

Sizes and Colors has used Appeon mobile together with PowerBuilder to develop several mobile apps to cater to the various needs of a cosmetics chain store.  In this Webcast, Fili Sosa, the CEO of Sizes and Colors will illustrate how to think “out-of-box” and useful techniques for building stunning mobile apps.  You will see how to properly architect your app and code structure, how to access mobile device information, how to incorporate Google charts & other third-party tools, and much more.

PowerBuilder.TV - Developing an EAServer Migration Roadmap

Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 8:00 AM PST (Los Angeles) / 17H00 PM CET (Paris).
Presenter: Don Clayton, President, Intertech Consulting

Many mission-critical PowerBuilder systems use EAServer in the middle tier to distribute business logic, pool database connections, manage memory, and perform batch services. As EAServer is now “end-of-life”, organizations need to develop a plan to migrate away from EAServer.

Intertech Consulting recently completed two successful EAServer migrations by migrating the logic to .NET. This presentation will cover strategies and tactics for recovering the middle-tier PowerBuilder code and the re-hosting the logic to keep those mission critical systems going. A variety of options will be presented so organizations can preserve their investment in PowerBuilder.

http://www.powerbuildertv.com/index.php/en/upcoming-webinars/701-developing-an-easerver-migration-roadmap