Monday, August 31, 2009

PowerBuilder returns from the dead...

Not sure how I missed it when it was first released.  Or perhaps my age is showing and I just forgot I saw it earlier.  In any event, it's an IDC report reviewing the history of PowerBuilder and commenting on the .Net direction incorporated into the last few releases.  Of particular interest for people using the product since the early days, it includes the release date for every major version back to 1.0.

3 comments:

Danny said...

Mr. Armstrong,

This is an excerpt from a readme file included
in a WebServices project you put together back in 1994.
-------------------------------------------------
amazon - A sample PB client for Amazon.com web services. You will need to ensure that the pbsoapclient100.pbd library is in the library search path for this target. You should *not* have to modify the web service project or regenerate the proxy. However, you should register with Amazon.com
to obtain a tag and developer tokens:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/002-4983416-5835217?node=3435361
Currently the services will work without those tokens being provided, but that may change in the future.
----------------------------------------------------
Our shop is currently at PB 10.2. Migrating to PB 11/12 is NOT an option at this point in time.

Now for my question:
What is the tag and token ? I did register with AWS
and have a AWS account plus an accessid which is a combination of 20 alphanumeric characters.

To get your sample to run is it a matter of setting the is_tag to the accessid mentioned above ? Or is
more code needed.

I've already migrated and regenerated the application to 10.2 and added the soap pbd to the library list.

The next piece is to call a .NET Webservice which
contains WCF calls while in PB 10.2. If it can be
done just say yes or no. If yes I'll do the R&D , if
no I won't beat a dead horse.

I did go back your PB 9.0 book and reviewed the Java example for a Web Service. We don't use Java so it might be a hard sell.

Thanks in advance.

brucearmstrong said...

The problem with Amazon web services, and the reason that Sybase never wanted to supply a code sample for it, is that they update the interface on a regular basis. Since I originally wrote that, they've also updated the authentication method. You're going to have to regenerate the proxy and write your own code to call the service. Little if any of the original code I did probably still works.

There's no clear Y/N on whether you can call a WCF service. It depends how the WCF service was written. One of the biggest problems the .net folks have is that they tend to use data types in their web services that are unique to .net, rendering them non-interoperable with non .Net languages. They seem to have lost the idea that one of the big selling points of web services is language and platform neutrality.

Danny said...

Thanks for the quick response.

I think their authentication service uses the 20 character accessorid I signed up for earlier
this week. Obviously, this did not exist back in 1994.

When I run your sample I'm getting a 403
return code. I assume it's looking for this code.
Just a guess , I'm in unchartered territory here.

Any idea how I can include this code in the existing Proxy ? After proxy regeneration, add the authentication piece ? I'll put the WCF piece on the
back burner for now.

Thanks