Sybase Bets On Component Development

Six new tools ease building, managing of applications

By Rich Levin

ybase Inc. last week rolled out PowerStudio Enterprise, an integrated suite of six development tools for building, deploying, and managing component-based applications. The announcement came at the Powersoft developers' conference in Nashville, Tenn.

PowerBuilder Enterprise 6.0, also announced at the conference, forms the foundation of the PowerStudio product. Also included are PowerSite, a Web-site development system; PowerJ Enterprise, a RAD tool for Java; Power++ Enterprise, a RAD platform for C++; the PowerDesigner AppModeler database design tool ; and Jaguar, a component transaction server. The bundle will ship this month for a price of $3,495.

Sybase CEO Mitchell Kertzman says component-based development, which can scale business objects across multiple tiers and platforms, is the technology that is pushing distributed computing into the enterprise.

But some analysts are unsure what will happen after IT shops deploy millions of components. "We're talking about taking already complex systems and breaking them up into lots of little pieces," says Michael Barnes, an analyst with the Hurwitz Group, an IT consulting firm in Newton, Mass. "How are they going to manage this? [Sybase] has not clearly articulated its strategy in that area."

On tap for future PowerBuilder releases are component generators for COM/DCOM, ActiveX, Java and JavaBeans, and Corba technologies. Microsoft CEO Bill Gatessays his company is working with Powersoft to deliver tools that support Windows platforms for Internet and client-server development.

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