PowerBuilder Upgrade In Testing

By Rich Levin

owersoft, a business unit of Sybase Inc., put the next release of its flagship rapid database application development platform into beta testing last week.

PowerBuilder 6.0, scheduled for release in the second half of the year, will feature broad support for component-based development and will include a component architecture that lets developers mix multiple component and object types.

PowerBuilder 6.0's Component Factory is an extensible plug-in architecture that will initially support C++ and native PowerBuilder objects. Company officials promise to release additional plug-ins that bring support for Microsoft's COM (Component Object Model) and DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) in the second half of 1997. A plug-in for the Object Management Group's Corba standard is also in the works, Powersoft says.

"We rearchitected the Project Painter so that when we make these different generators available, they essentially will plug in to the Project Painter," says Cathy Cole, senior product manager for PowerBuilder. "Whichever generators are there, the Project Painter will recognize them and give you the option of deploying a component of that type." Components created with the Component Factory can be managed by any number of mid-tier facilities, such as Microsoft's Transaction Server or Powersoft's Jaguar Component Transaction Server, according to Powersoft.

While PowerBuilder developers are generally pleased with version 6.0's beta feature set, some are concerned with its lack of support for building ActiveX controls. Says Alexander Pellow, senior software consultant with Cornerstone Information Services, a systems development and consulting firm in Austin, Texas, and longtime PowerBuilder developer, "Considering the number of organizations that have major commitments to PowerBuilder, Powersoft has to provide the ability to create ActiveX controls."

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