Friday, December 20, 2013

PowerBuilder User Group Germany

These are my notes from the PowerBuilder User Group meeting in Walldorf Germany on December 3, 2013, originally posted on my personal blog site.

Robyn Chan - Senior Vice President - Head of Mobile Platform
Michael Redford - PMP Business Information Technology, Products and Innovation

PowerBuilder 15
  • 32 and 64 bit support
  • OData
  • SQL 2012
  • Oracle 12
  • Windows 8
  • .Net 4.5
  • Dockable Windows

Beta builds are ready now, but access to it is still being figured out.

  • PB 15+
    • Open APIs eg objects like ORCA, IDE infrastructure/painter, build process
    • Hana XSE support for PowerScript ( XSE is their JavaScript like app server language)
    • HANA Cloud (HEC, Neo AWS) and on premise options
  • Evaluating
    • RDL (River Definition Language) support for PowerScript (intermediate layer, platform agnostic)
    • WebApp Toolkit for multi-channel development (internal name - not announced yet, web based IDE, AppDesigner, AppBuilder, the latter was developed by the PowerBuilder team to create mobile apps, SAP UI5 -- HTML5)
    • Client SDKs for NVOs - Typical PB app is 30% business logic in the client.  The audience thought it was a lot higher.

PowerBuilder.Net versus PowerBuilder Client
  • Looking at trying to get into one IDE

Plan to support JavaScript in IDE
  • Yes, that was what support for XSE was intended to convey

EAServer - what happened to NetWeaver integration
  • Couldn't put on slide - Looking at migrating PASP to Netweaver - probably wouldn't focus on other app servers

What about support contracts
  • That's one of the big questions they're working on.   The other is that existing SAP customers have an S-user account.  They're trying to figure out how to automatically give people S-user accounts so they can access the beta without going through the S-user creation process.

More on the state of HTML5 development

Specifically with regard to mobile applications.  It's beginning to look like HTML5 may work well for desktop web, but native is more appropriate for mobile devices.
"The promise of HTML5 is you write once, run everywhere and this is not happening because of the divergence of browser features." HTML5 does not offer the performance and access to native features that a native app can.
"We're going to see HTML5 relegated to just a small portion of apps," including forms, content consumption and customer acquisition apps, said King. Native will be for everything else, 

Friday, December 06, 2013

More from the PowerBuilder User Group Germany

Here's a rather poor video of the discussion about SAP's commitment to PowerBuilder:



SAP recorded their own video using much better video and audio recording equipment than I used.  Hopefully they'll post it online somewhere as well later.

Also, on Wednesday during the workshop there was a short demonstration of PowerBuilder 15.  I've included screenshots of the new Classic (which will likely be renamed to Native):


And PowerBuilder.Net


Finally, here's a shot of the attendees on the first day, quite a packed house.



Thursday, December 05, 2013

More good news, PowerBuilder 12.5 and 15 are now showing up in the SAP downloads area

Looks like a work in progress.  But it's another sign that PowerBuilder is about to become an officially recognized product.  Thanks to Christoph Meken for passing along the info.

Also note the link for PowerBuilder 15!

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

PowerBuilder User Group Germany

Robyn Chan - Senior Vice President - Head of Mobile Platform
Michael Redford - PMP Business Information Technology, Products and Innovation

PowerBuilder 15
  • 32 and 64 bit support
  • OData
  • SQL 2012
  • Oracle 12
  • Windows 8
  • .Net 4.5
  • Dockable Windows
Beta builds are ready now, but access to it is still being figured out.
  • PB 15+
    • Open APIs eg objects like ORCA, IDE infrastructure/painter, build process
    • Hana XSE support for PowerScript ( XSE is their JavaScript like app server language)
    • HANA Cloud (HEC, Neo AWS) and on premise options
  • Evaluating
    • RDL (River Definition Language) support for PowerScript (intermediate layer, platform agnostic)
    • WebApp Toolkit for multi-channel development (internal name - not announced yet, web based IDE, AppDesigner, AppBuilder, the latter was developed by the PowerBuilder team to create mobile apps, SAP UI5 -- HTML5)
    • Client SDKs for NVOs - Typical PB app is 30% business logic in the client.  The audience thought it was a lot higher.
PowerBuilder.Net versus PowerBuilder Client
  • Looking at trying to get into one IDE
Plan to support JavaScript in IDE
  • Yes, that was what support for XSE was intended to convey
EAServer - what happened to NetWeaver integration
  • Couldn't put on slide - Looking at migrating PASP to Netweaver - probably wouldn't focus on other app servers
What about support contracts
  • That's one of the big questions they're working on.   The other is that existing SAP customers have an S-user account.  They're trying to figure out how to automatically give people S-user accounts so they can access the beta without going through the S-user creation process.