New Sybase PowerBuilder 12 requires little coding

As InfoWorld’s Paul Krill reported in mid-August, Sybase is beta-testing PowerBuilder 12, which features a rewritten PowerBuilder DataWindow technology that offers native support of Microsoft’s WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), Windows Forms, and Web Forms (ASP.Net). I alluded to the new DataWindow briefly when I wrote about Alpha Five V10: “The centerpiece of the system is a data grid with more flexibility than I’ve seen in any other grid, with the possible exception of the PowerBuilder DataWindow.”

I’ve been waiting until I had some samples that illustrated the power of the DataWindow — that took a few weeks only because the PowerBuilder folks have been traveling and I haven’t had a chance to join the PowerBuilder 12 beta program.

[ Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld’s Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer. ]

The upper screen shot, illustrating a parent/child/grandchild data relationship, required:

• 1 line of code for each of the three DataWindows to retrieve
• 1 line of code for each of the two detail DataWindows to persist changes to the database
• 1 line of code to reset the Order Detail DataWindow when a newly selected Customer or Order makes its result set invalid
• 6 lines of code total, plus 6 additional lines of code to establish the connection to the database

The lower screen shot, illustrating an updateable TreeView presentation style DataWindow with a grid-style hybridization, required:

• 1 line of code to retrieve the result set from the database
• 1 line of code to persist the user modifications to the database
• 6 additional lines of code to establish the connection to the database

Click on either image to see a full-size version.