Thursday Morning Sessions at #PBTechWave

First session was Terry Dykstra's on Infomaker. He also suffered from the Yakov effect (Yakov was leaturing in the next room and you could here him at about the same level as Terry was speaking).




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Terry demonstrated how to edit the underlying datawindows behind a form to customize the form appearance. He also demonstrated how to create a PB Style Library using PowerBuilder which the Infomaker user can then use. The comment on the form has to begin with 'Style:' followed by the name of the style you want to appear in Infomaker. He noted how using certain behaviors in Infomaker are determined by the names you assign the controls in the style. You can also override IMs behavior by turning ShowStandardStyles to 0 in a network install and then only the styles you provide are shown. You can also put shared database profiles on the network. When you add a global function, it becomes an 'action' that the infomaker user can then associate with a button in their form. He then demonstrated modifying the provided style library to add additional functionality (particularly a more friendly filter dialog). Next was a demonstration of how making some registry changes opened up new capabilities within the IM IDE. He has it to the point where he can display the event and function lists, but any attempts to open the script painter causes the IDE to crash. Then demonstrated adding command bar items to the powerbar in the IM IDE. Demonstrated adding additional toolbar icons to the Library Painter by changing the registry (import and export). Also demonstrated that you can import other objects than DataWindows even though that's all the dialog shows you as the possible file types. The problem is that the library painter doesn't display the other object types, but a directory listing printout will show what's there. You can create a function PBL and then add that to the style library list. Showed an application he uses where he manages all the reports that his users create, including tracking who has run the report when, so they know when reports are no longer being used.


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Infomaker.Net
VS2010
.Net 4.0
No PBLs
New PDF Driver (uses PDFSharp)
Tab order on Master/Detail forms
Import/Export objects
Show global functions
getdatawindowname()
Candle Graph
Turn on/off preview mode in report painter
Easier to get SQL for report
Web services as source for data
No pipeline objects though

Next up was Dave Fish's session on Charting and Graphing.


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Some discussion of the history of graphing in PowerBuilder, including recent additions.

SavePallete method allows you to export the pallete, edit it, and reimport it with LoadPallete.


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Tooltips allow the user to see the data value under the pointer as they hover over the chart.

Discussion of some of the newer charting types (Donut, Scatter, Bubble, Radar, Cone, Candlestick)


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Also demonstrated applying skins to the window containing the chart to modernize the look.


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The next session I was planning to attend after that was cancelled, so Dave Fish offered to do a more in depth look at PowerBuilder 15 Classic features.

.Net Dataset binding
Dockable windows
Grid and grid splitter
Standard controls in the toolbars
Some discussion of 64 bit compile, but it may have to come out in a post 15 MR (64 bit compile for PB.Net is expected in a 12.5 MR).


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Hosted on Fotki

Finally for this morning we have John Strano's session on adding 3rd party controls to WPF DataWindows. Once you've added the control, you'll need to export the datawindow syntax and edit it by hand if you need to change the XAML declaration. When working with the XAML, drop it in the Window painter first. Once you know it's working there, only then drop it into the DataWindow custom control dialog.


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Hosted on Fotki

If the control has a storyboard (animation) you can rip it out if you don't want to include it.


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