Sybase has announced the beta availability for PowerBuilder 12, considered by the company to be one of the most significant in the product's history. This latest release provides developers with an easy and cost-effective path to the Microsoft .NET Framework, the Microsoft Windows component that supports building and running the next generation of applications.
"Our goal is to make it the easiest tool with which to build .NET applications. It is the only tool on the market that helps customers with a migration path for their existing client server Windows 32 based code and leverages it and helps them move it into the .NET world using only their current skill set," Sue Dunnell, PowerBuilder product manager, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
In terms of PowerBuilder usage today, adds Dunnell, "PowerBuilder is still used in every major industry around the world-state, local municipal, federal, international governments, and every industry you can think of, education, finance-and there are hundreds of thousands of enterprise applications out there."
Sybase will ship PowerBuilder with two self-contained modules, one designed for Windows 32-based development and a new comprehensive module for developing Windows Presentation Foundation-based applications on top of the Microsoft Visual Studio shell.
PowerBuilder 12 works with the Visual Studio infrastructure to expand productivity for the .NET Framework, enhancing development of Windows Presentation Foundation applications. With the release of PowerBuilder 12, according to Sybase, it becomes the only vendor to allow customers to maximize their existing investment in code and skills with a solution that converts Win32 code to the .NET Framework seamlessly and removes the pain of expensive migration.
Additionally, with this release, Sybase's patented DataWindow has been completely rewritten to natively support Windows Presentation Foundation and allow for deployment of fully managed code in .NET Framework-based applications. "The crown jewel of PowerBuilder and the reason it is so successful is that people can build applications really fast because of the DataWindow. They can access large amounts of data from different databases and apply a lot of business validation logic, different presentation styles, sorting, filtering, all with one control and five lines of scripting," notes Dunnell.
For additional information about the release and to sign up for the PowerBuilder 12 beta program, go here.