I've recently started to support a PowerBuilder 9 app which is finally being upgraded to PowerBuilder 12. I'm trying to figure out whether I should be looking at migrating to PowerBuilder Classic or .NET. It seems to me that going with PB.NET would give me more flexibility going forward, but reading the documentation doesn't give me a clear picture of what the benefits would be. Obviously, I'd be able to take advantage of WPF forms, and I'd be using the Visual Studio Shell, but I don't know if those are good enough reasons to change.
Migrating a Powerbuilder 9 app to 12
1k Views Asked by SarekOfVulcan At
1
There are 1 best solutions below
Related Questions in MIGRATION
- Add additional fields to Linq group by
- couldn't copy pdb file to another directory while consuming wcf web service
- Why are the aliases for string and object in lowercase?
- WPF MessageBox Cancel checkbox check
- Resolve object using DI container with object instance
- Creating a parametrized field name for a SELECT clause
- Does compiler optimize operation on const variable and literal const number?
- Get data from one form to another form in C#
- Writing/Overwriting to specific XML file from ASP.NET code behind
- Deleting Orphans with Fluent NHibernate
Related Questions in POWERBUILDER
- Add additional fields to Linq group by
- couldn't copy pdb file to another directory while consuming wcf web service
- Why are the aliases for string and object in lowercase?
- WPF MessageBox Cancel checkbox check
- Resolve object using DI container with object instance
- Creating a parametrized field name for a SELECT clause
- Does compiler optimize operation on const variable and literal const number?
- Get data from one form to another form in C#
- Writing/Overwriting to specific XML file from ASP.NET code behind
- Deleting Orphans with Fluent NHibernate
Trending Questions
- UIImageView Frame Doesn't Reflect Constraints
- Is it possible to use adb commands to click on a view by finding its ID?
- How to create a new web character symbol recognizable by html/javascript?
- Why isn't my CSS3 animation smooth in Google Chrome (but very smooth on other browsers)?
- Heap Gives Page Fault
- Connect ffmpeg to Visual Studio 2008
- Both Object- and ValueAnimator jumps when Duration is set above API LvL 24
- How to avoid default initialization of objects in std::vector?
- second argument of the command line arguments in a format other than char** argv or char* argv[]
- How to improve efficiency of algorithm which generates next lexicographic permutation?
- Navigating to the another actvity app getting crash in android
- How to read the particular message format in android and store in sqlite database?
- Resetting inventory status after order is cancelled
- Efficiently compute powers of X in SSE/AVX
- Insert into an external database using ajax and php : POST 500 (Internal Server Error)
Popular # Hahtags
Popular Questions
- How do I undo the most recent local commits in Git?
- How can I remove a specific item from an array in JavaScript?
- How do I delete a Git branch locally and remotely?
- Find all files containing a specific text (string) on Linux?
- How do I revert a Git repository to a previous commit?
- How do I create an HTML button that acts like a link?
- How do I check out a remote Git branch?
- How do I force "git pull" to overwrite local files?
- How do I list all files of a directory?
- How to check whether a string contains a substring in JavaScript?
- How do I redirect to another webpage?
- How can I iterate over rows in a Pandas DataFrame?
- How do I convert a String to an int in Java?
- Does Python have a string 'contains' substring method?
- How do I check if a string contains a specific word?
Good question, and not a trivial one.
On the plus side, you get WPF controls and layout control. If you're a developer that isn't planning to go too far afield, that will get you pretty, shiny controls, skinability, and resize/scaling built into the painter. If you're an uber-geek, you can start doing things like embedding controls (think a progress bar inside a control button to represent a count-down timer on the button that will be the default action when time runs out on a timed dialog), although when both you and PB are trying to do fancy things with your XML, I'm guessing that you might step on each others' toes from time to time.
Also, you get easy access to the vast .NET library of functions, in addition to PowerScript. Again, the easy-going developer may not get much advantage out of that, but the nose-to-the-screen type will get a kick out of easily building SMTP functionality into their app.
On the down side, you can probably count on the migration going not quite as smoothly as a PB to PB migration. If you need it working tomorrow, starting on a PB to PB.NET migration today probably isn't the way to go. Some things will break and need fixing, and every window will need hands on to at least take advantage of the resizing.
The other down side that I found was performance, particularly app start up (and I hear this is a common complaint among WPF developers, not just PB.NET developers). I was expecting everything to run faster, but found it to be a mixed bag.
One other point: The latest PB (at time of writing) is 12.6, which is a maintenance patch of 12.5. If you buy 12.0, you won't be able to upgrade for free; the jump between 12.0 and 12.5 is a "major" release that requires a priced upgrade. Maybe you want the n-1 version, but if not, target buying 12.5.
Good luck.
@Matt Balent indirectly brought up another good point in the comments. Moving from PB9 to PB12, if you're an experienced PB developer, you can probably be productive the same day without missing a beat. Moving to PB.NET will entail a non-trivial learning curve. The IDE is significantly different, so even setting a Default attribute on a CommandButton on the first day may be frustrating (... not impossible, but if that's your first task, I'd plan 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds).