PowerBuilder for Not Yet Techies

"Computer Careers: High Tech Jobs Building Powerful Database Programs for Client/Server Systems"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

PowerBuilder is a leading "client/server application development tool which provides the ability to build, deploy and maintain applications on Win 3.x, Windows 95/98, NT, UNIX and Macintosh operating systems."

PowerBuilder is an all-purpose programming tool. Computing is changing, and programming is changing along with it. PowerBuilder is a well-known development environment.

Not too long ago, businesses had one or two huge mainframe computers. Programmers in that computer career wrote huge applications with tens of thousands or more lines of code. This software worked on that huge mainframe, but only on that brand or model.

Now, however, companies are networking their computers together and to the Internet. They still have their old legacy computers and software, but they must cope with accommodating customers and suppliers with different computers and different software. The official term is "client/server systems." Everything is about helping one computer – the client – interact productively with another computer – the server. PowerBuilder is designed to work with that.

No longer can computers and their software be content to keep to themselves, like hermits. They’ve got to get out and communicate with other computers and their software. Just as people who speak different languages need translators (who can speak both languages) to communicate, computers these days need software which can speak many languages.

PowerBuilder is especially for people with computer jobs developing and working with relational database applications. It builds on to SQL (Structured Query Language). Power Builder is object oriented.

PowerBuilder is a graphical development tool, so using it in your computer career is much like programming with other languages that use graphical development environments, such as Visual Basic and Delphi

It’s odd to me to read about these languages because the experts and the ads seem to talk about these languages and their graphical development tools – which is simply another, particular kind of software application – as though the tool and the language were the same thing.

The language that is used to program PowerBuilder is called Power Script. Power Script is loosely based on BASIC.

PowerBuilder supports programming on many databases, including Sybase, Oracle and Informix. Power Builder also comes with a single-user relational database management system, Sybase SQL Anywhere (formerly WATCOM SQL) 32-bit relational database.

Power Builder also contains an interesting feature called Info Maker

This is a forms and reporting tool that allows non- programmers to create PowerBuilder applications using a point-and-click interface without writing any code. This allows end-users to have a limited role in developing the application.

Mmm, a trend like that could put programmers out of business!

PowerBuilder is obviously in tune with the trends of today’s computer field and though it has competition, there is a high demand for people with that computer career.

Next: CORBA

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