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I am looking at a powerbuilder 11.5 application modernization. I think I would want to Web Service enable the powerbuilder server and rebuild the client in HTML verusus re-write the entire stack (its over 1.8M lines of code). Does anyone know if WebMethods or a similar ESB can interface and abstract a powerbuilder server?

Matt617
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    PowerBuilder is an application development tool, and while it's applications can be deployed anywhere, it is designed to create client-side applications. As a result, I suspect your reference to a "PowerBuilder server" will draw the online equivalent of blank stares; it is not a native or intuitive concept. I suspect the level of detail required to answer your question will defy online assistance; you may need someone to come in and go over the code to analyze the app's functionality and interfaces before identifying a solution. – Terry Jan 03 '14 at 20:53
  • i guess i was hoping for someone with enough powerbuilder experience to understand its messaging or other hooks for general tactics of exposing business logic. I think i have found what i need. thanks for taking a look. – Matt617 Jan 05 '14 at 03:37

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I did some research on modernizing Powerbuilder and discovered with this particular version (and I suspect others) it is not trivial.

PowerBuilder modernization is difficult because:

  1. it is based on a client/server architecture, so the UI is compiled and deployed to a users machine
  2. all of the business logic is locked up in a language that is not portable to other platforms: PowerScript
  3. PowerScript runs in its own proprietary virtual machine: PBVM.

Sybase provides strategies and methods to move to a distributed, web-based J2EE platform (their EAServer), or .NET. Both approaches come with lots of caveats, considerations, pros, and cons. A good example is that in PowerBuilder, developers can put code in visual object (like attached to an onEvent of a button), but when moving to an n-tiered environment this logic needs to reside on the server in a non-visual object (NVO). This would allow relatively simple event interaction that could be captured and modernized even though it will really require a good deep look at all of the interfaces and some code insertion which needs to be carefully monitored.

A paper that explores some of the steps and considerations for moving to their EAServer: http://www.sybase.com/sb_content/1020364/PBtoEAS_7steps_v2.pdf

Matt617
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