If you would like to participate in this revolutionary release, follow this link to register and begin your journey.
New Features for PowerBuilder 11.0 Beta 1 ...
Contemporary Toolbar
Starting with PowerBuilder 11 beta 1, the PowerBuilder development environment has a fresh look with toolbars that have a more modern appearance. The "contemporary style" toolbar introduced in the PowerBuilder 10.5 runtime engine is now featured in the development environment, with gradient background shading and a style familiar to PowerBuilder developers who have become accustomed to the toolbars used in Microsoft Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005.
.NET Web Forms Deployment
With PowerBuilder 11, you can deploy PowerBuilder applications that will run in a browser as ASP.NET 2.0 applications. To do that, create a .NET Web Forms project using the .NET Web Forms Application Wizard and deploy the application from the .NET Web Forms project painter. You can test the Web application by right-clicking on the project in the System Tree and selecting the Run Project menu item in the context menu. Your end users will access the deployed application through a browser with a URL that you provide. If your PowerBuilder application is an MDI application, the MDI sheets are displayed as tab pages in the deployed Web application when multiple sheets are opened.
Most PowerBuilder features, including embedded SQL, file operations, DataWindow printing, and the calling of external functions, are supported in Web Forms applications. Features that are not appropriate for Web deployment, such as drag-and-drop, are not supported. When deploying an application, PowerBuilder reports all unsupported features used by the application in the Output window. The Web Forms deployment feature is suitable for applications of moderate complexity that use query, data transaction, and reporting features. Typically, only minor adjustments to PowerScript code are necessary before you deploy PowerBuilder applications as .NET Web Forms applications.
This feature enables you to easily and quickly deploy PowerBuilder applications to the web without incurring a steep learning curve for building and deploying .NET Web Forms applications. You can leverage existing skills and experience in PowerBuilder to deploy applications to ASP.NET servers.
.NET Windows Forms Deployment
With PowerBuilder 11, you can deploy PowerBuilder applications as .NET Windows Forms applications. To do that, create a .NET Windows Forms project using the .NET Windows Forms Application Wizard and deploy the application with the .NET Windows Forms project painter. You can then test the Windows Forms application by right-clicking on the project in the System Tree and selecting the Run Project context menu item, or by selecting Run from the toolbar of the Windows Forms Project painter.
Most PowerBuilder features, including drag-and-drop, registry, and clipboard functions are supported in Windows Forms applications. In most cases, these features behave the same as they do in client-server PowerBuilder applications, but may have a slightly different appearance. A few new properties have been introduced to enable support for PowerBuilder controls in Windows Forms applications. Please refer to the online Help for further details.
The Windows Forms deployment feature is an extension of the traditional PowerBuilder Win32 application in the .NET environment. You can create .NET
Windows Forms applications in PowerScript syntax without incurring the learning curve often necessary for application deployment to the .NET platform. With the .NET interoperability features of PowerBuilder 11, you can leverage functionality provided by the .NET framework and third-party tool vendors.
Smart Client Deployment
In the past few years, Web-based applications have dominated the application deployment market. One of the key reasons to choose Web-based applications is the ease of deployment. The PowerBuilder 11 Smart Client deployment feature is designed to leverage this benefit and simplify application deployment. Smart Client applications bring together the best of both worlds: a combination of the richness your end users are used to with client-server based applications combined with the ease of deployment of Web applications.
PowerBuilder 11 has a new component called intelligent updater that you can use to make .NET Windows Forms applications self-updatable in quickly and easily. Simply enable Smart Client deployment in the .NET Windows Forms Application wizard to take advantage of this feature. For further details, please refer to the online Help.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
PowerBuilder 11 includes a new interface (SNC) to support SQL Server 2005. This interface is similar to the Microsoft OLE DB interface, but it uses Microsoft’s new OLE DB driver dedicated to SQL Server 2005. With this interface, PowerBuilder applications will be able to leverage the new features provided by the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database. Support for these new features is not available in the current beta, but should be available in the next public beta.
ZZ Fom http://chrispollach.pbdjmagazine.com/powerbuilder_11net_released.htm