An alternative IDE for Sybase Powerbuilder

S

8

14

Does anyone know of an alternative IDE for Sybase Powerbuilder? It feels pretty clunky, after working with VS2008 and Eclipse.

If not, has anyone successfully worked with this language outside the IDE? I'm not against using a simple text editor, but I find edit-import-regenerate-test-export-edit is clunkier than simply using the Powerbuilder editor.

To date, the only tools I have had any success with are:

PowerGen, for builds (with NUnit and CruiseControl.NET)
ConTEXT, which has syntax highlighting for Powerbuilder
PBL Peeper, which has some interesting features not present in the IDE

EDIT: I added a bounty to draw some wider attention to the question. It would be a very nice thing to have, if it exists.

EDIT: Well that was disappointing. The bounty apparently did not cause even 1 new person to look at the question.

Sasaki answered 26/3, 2009 at 17:46 Comment(7)

Welcome to the wonderful word of PowerBuilder. Enjoy your stay! If buy chance you are in one of the newer version, be happen. The IDE for PowerBuilder 7 is really fun to work in. NOTE THE SARCASM. :) – Uela 26/3, 2009 at 17:50

Yes I see my spelling mistake. Son of a gun. :) – Uela 26/3, 2009 at 17:51

Not yet, but from other posts I know you're probably aware of what Sybase has planned. You will eventually be able to use the VS IDE with PB. – Lubricate 26/3, 2009 at 19:51

Ah yes. IIRC PB7 was one of the buggier generations - PB8 is much better. I started on 6.5 back in the late 90s and I've used everything in between - currently 11.2. Powerbuilder's paid my rent for over 10 years so I can't complain too much. – Sasaki 27/3, 2009 at 9:23

@Bernard - Yes, very much looking forward to that. I imagine that its at least a year away still though – Sasaki 27/3, 2009 at 9:28

response.sybase.com/forms/WW09JULPB12beta1 – Broadfaced 16/7, 2009 at 6:52

I would like to see PB syntax highlighting for Notepad++ – Caviar 22/2, 2010 at 22:44

A

4

None that I'm aware of, although you could probably use a source control tool, edit in your source control repository, and Get Latest Version from the PB IDE to shorten your text editor cycle. Be warned that there are hacks required to edit anything over 128 ASCII. (My guess is that this is to allow everything Unicode to be source controlled in the most restrictive source control tools.)

As Paul said, PB12 is coming with based on the Visual Studio shell, and will include things like collapsible code blocks, Intellisense, etc.... However, for PB12, this will only be used for WPF targets and a few .NET-type targets (like assemblies), last I heard. Win32 targets will continue to use the "classic" IDE.

Good luck,

Terry.

P.S. Thanks for the PBL Peeper compliment.

Alnico answered 26/3, 2009 at 21:4 Comment(1)

Using source control as a middleman is an interesting idea. I suspect my fellow devs might not appreciate the big jump in commits this would cause though! – Sasaki 27/3, 2009 at 9:30

N

4

The PowerBuilder IDE is clunky, but I don't think developing completely outside the PowerBuilder IDE is a good idea. I think there are just too many dependencies right now.

However, the IDE for PowerBuilder 12 will be built using Microsoft's Visual Studio Isolated Shell so it ought to be much better when that is released. Also, I believe they'll be doing away with the PBL format which ought to make source control much easier to work with.

Certainly something to watch.

Nygaard answered 26/3, 2009 at 20:8 Comment(0)

A

4

None that I'm aware of, although you could probably use a source control tool, edit in your source control repository, and Get Latest Version from the PB IDE to shorten your text editor cycle. Be warned that there are hacks required to edit anything over 128 ASCII. (My guess is that this is to allow everything Unicode to be source controlled in the most restrictive source control tools.)

As Paul said, PB12 is coming with based on the Visual Studio shell, and will include things like collapsible code blocks, Intellisense, etc.... However, for PB12, this will only be used for WPF targets and a few .NET-type targets (like assemblies), last I heard. Win32 targets will continue to use the "classic" IDE.

Good luck,

Terry.

P.S. Thanks for the PBL Peeper compliment.

Alnico answered 26/3, 2009 at 21:4 Comment(1)

Using source control as a middleman is an interesting idea. I suspect my fellow devs might not appreciate the big jump in commits this would cause though! – Sasaki 27/3, 2009 at 9:30

W

2

What I do is right-click the object and edit source. Then I copy the text and paste it into Notepad++ to edit. I copy and paste back to PowerBuilder, then I can save and see any errors. I've got a fairly decent User Defined Language for PowerScript if anyone's interested.

Added: Please be aware that I've seen the PB Source editor corrupt DataWindows. They were all large DataWindows. To be safe always export DataWindows to edit.

Watford answered 9/11, 2009 at 23:30 Comment(1)

Where can I download that user defined language? Thank you – Olsson 29/11, 2012 at 19:30

D

0

One tool that will most probably make your PB experience way better is Visual Expert, which provides a good source browser. Such a tool should have been integrated into the PB IDE a long time ago, IMHO. Only problem is that it's not free, as opposed to the other tools you mention.

Regarding using external source editors, you can probably take advantage of OrcaScript, which is a scripting language that lets you perform actions such as export and import of PB objects from outside of the IDE. It will require some effort, but you can setup a basic dev env using batch files with ORCA scripts and some additional external tools. However, this setup will lack any visual editing capabilities, which means no (feasible) GUI or DW work. If you're mostly into NVOs, it could work. But then if that's the case, why use PB in the first place?...

I too have heard PB12's use of VS will be limited to some .NET stuff, which will probably benefit only a very small portion of the PB programmers community. I'm afraid the rest of us are stuck with the awful IDE for years to come.

Detrimental answered 30/3, 2009 at 12:35 Comment(0)

W

0

Other than exporting the source and editing it I don't know of another IDE for PB. One problem you may have is that the exported source contains a lot of syntax that is not documented in the manuals. The PB IDE generates this code but there is no support for creating it by hand. I think you are stuck with the PB IDE

Wiliness answered 31/7, 2009 at 4:16 Comment(0)

M

0

In my modest five Years of experiences starting with Powerbuilder 5/6, now using PB 10, I tempt to :

build my own browser from the classdefinition object based on Powerbuilder
tried to use autohotkey in order to open datawindows comfortable (we have several thousands in the project and i am two-finger-driven)
truly investigated in the idea using an external editor/IDE suppoted by an autohotkey script which is undermined by sybase allowing only mouse-click-usage of PB
using Visual Expert which is neither a truly integration in the IDE, nor is really worth in analyzing datwindow/powerscript interaction
ending by build hopes on PB12 Visual Studio, which lacks - depending on compatibility issues - ...

... i came to the conclusion that there will be no chance in improving Powerbuilder to an state-of-the-art language

In my philosophy - I obtained during those years - I distinguish between two types of OOP-oriented languages:

the one that award using object-orientation like C#, Python, Ruby (C++) etc. and very much the Java-Eclipse/Netbeans-Universe does
the other one that punish using object-orientation like Powerbuilder and the old Visual Basic, for example (which is causative the OOP-Idea comes afterwards and is "plugged in"). Especially the demand that all object should always be compiled (regenerated) and that you could't work with ancestors and descandants concurrently makes it painful to use real OOP.

...In memory of the good old Unix(Solaris)/C++ days...

Matronymic answered 30/12, 2010 at 12:31 Comment(4)

I don't doubt you've had difficulty. However, in the case of browsers, the abundance of PB code browsers over the years (PBL Peeper, yBrowser, etc...) indicates it is possible, and you just took an approach that made it more difficult. (IME, ClassDefinitions are too restrictive, and aren't built for that purpose. I use them for in-app querying only, mostly from frameworks.) I think you're being too harsh on Visual Expert; as long as you have the power to do something like dw.DataObject = ProfileString (...), a code analysis tool has no hope of accurately linking PowerScript to DataWindows. – Alnico 30/12, 2010 at 14:27

... ran out of space. And the leap from your difficulty building development supporting tools to "OOP punishment" conclusion is not clear to me. You may have a case for your conclusion, but I don't see it here. Maybe further clarification is necessary to make your point. – Alnico 30/12, 2010 at 14:31

The Browser that I build was made in year 2000 which worked well, but there is no support for editing classes by just using the context menu like the original PB Browser does (in fact it is also impossible to use autohotkey or equivalent tools for this task). – Matronymic 3/1, 2011 at 14:49

For me ist obvious that in big projects you would not build your datawindow just by setting the datwindow property, instead using a method for this task . But there are more limitations with visual expert; to sum it up for short: it's not an open tool like eclipse mentioned before. – Matronymic 3/1, 2011 at 14:55

G

0

I was researching a replacement solution that would be similar to PowerBuilder and I came across two that caught my eye.

The first was 'React Studio' https://reactstudio.com/ which I found via Alternativeto.net .

And the second was from an ad at the top of some Google searches but it was similar enough and looked good enough at first glance for me to want to take a closer look at it, and it's called 'Servoy' https://servoy.com/ .

Still researching but I currently have React Studio at the top of our list.

Goliath answered 15/3, 2019 at 17:17 Comment(0)

T

0

The TextPad editor has a syntax definition file for PowerBuilder 6.x contributed by [email protected] that I downloaded for free and customized several years ago. It works fine for later versions (including 8), doing keyword color highlighting on PowerScript srx files. Editing large source files in PB could get it to crash so it's usually safer, faster and more convenient to export to srx file, edit outside the IDE then re-import.

Treasurer answered 23/11, 2020 at 13:14 Comment(0)

Recommended topics

Hot tags