2

I’m curious if you can set up automatic updates in a program that was created in PowerBuilder? I read something about PBupdate, but was wondering if any one some insight?

PBNick
  • 55
  • 1
  • 11
  • Automatic updates for data in the database? Or automatic updates for PowerBuilder? Or automatic updates for the application you wrote? –  May 08 '18 at 04:49
  • For the application I wrote. I think it would better than constantly have the user community download a whole new version and deleting the old version. – PBNick May 08 '18 at 10:56
  • Many ways to skin a cat. The newer versions are more robust especially starting with the now hot PowerBuilder 2017 R2 by Appeon having web deploy as an option.Self developed solution works- there is no silver bullet answer though. – Rich Bianco May 10 '18 at 17:39

3 Answers3

1

We set this up at one company I worked at. The applications were started from a 'master program' called 'Launcher'. Each application had a version file. When the user started the Launcher, each PB application had its version checked against what was stored on the server. If the versions did not match then the files were copied from the server to the client. Launcher then launched the application executable. With this set up we could easily deploy a new version of an application simply by copying the files to the server and then have the user close the launcher and then re-starting it.

Matt Balent
  • 2,337
  • 2
  • 20
  • 23
  • 1
    I must have worked there also, or I'm showing my age. Manager at client I'm working always complains that PowerBuilder consultants are "too old". I'm like dude, I'm 50 years old myself- he said no they are really old. We need more young blood who is willing to dig for most answers and we'll bring you rest of the way. – Rich Bianco May 10 '18 at 17:42
1

You can download PBUpdater from here: http://www.topwizprogramming.com/tools.html

I use it for my PBSearch tool. It checks the UTC datetimestamp of all the files and downloads them.

Roland Smith
  • 957
  • 4
  • 7
0

What I did is to create a special directory on our file server. It contains all files needed to run an application. Client PCs just have an icon pointing to the executable(s) there. This way, each time I need to put a new version in production, I just copy the new file in that directory. Done. Everybody has the same version at the same time.

Marc Vanhoomissen
  • 395
  • 2
  • 12