Pocket PowerBuilder
Ian Thain
Pocket PowerBuilder Evangelist
PTOG Evangelist Team, Sybase Inc.
ian.thain@sybase.com
Agenda
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Introduction
Unwired Enterprise
Why PPB ?
Enterprise Mobile Applications
PPB Overview
PPB vs. PB
MobiLink
Developing An Application
Migrating
Demonstrations
Introduction
– Over the last 11 years we have seen PowerBuilder
grow and develop into the tool it is today. Originally for
Client Server, then incorporating Component
Development & RAD Thin Client Development.
– Also over the last 11 years we have seen increasing
developments in DataWindow technology that has
seen it appear (or not) as a non-visual DataStore,
Java DataWindow and HTML DataWindow
– DataWindows EVERYWHERE? Well nearly!
Introduction
• "Don't think big…Think Small!!"
• Pocket PowerBuilder is now coming to aid corporate
development of Pocket PC applications, brining all the
benefits
• RAD 4 GL and even the DataWindow technology.
• So we really can now say, DataWindows
EVERYWHERE!!!!
Unwired Enterprise
• Liquidity + Mobility = Unwired Enterprise
• Liquidity - Free flowing information with economic value
• Mobility - Freedom to work anytime, anywhere
Why PPB ?
• Pocket PCs are becoming more popular and are
produced by many manufactures such as
– HPTM,
– DellTM,
– ToshibaTM
• Pocket PC market leader HP - iPAQ
• Many companies are starting to realize the competitive
advantage that occasionally connected Pocket PCs can
provide in today’s business climate.
Why PPB ?
• Pocket PCs are not as powerful or as feature rich as
notebook computers or Tablet PCs but are a fully enabled
computer operating within a mobile context
• But their small size is proving popular with road warriors
looking to reduce the equipment they take with them
while traveling
• Pocket PCs are also allowing organizations to provide
automation in areas where computers wouldn’t fit
• Thus saving money by reducing data entry requirements
and eliminating data entry errors.
Why PPB ?
• While there are some development tools available for
creating Pocket PC applications, no tool seems to
combine the features of ease-of-use with power and
flexibility quite like Pocket PowerBuilder.
• With Pocket PowerBuilder and Adaptive Server
Anywhere for CETM, developers will be able to quickly
and easily create powerful Pocket PC applications for a
variety of uses.
• Ideal for Mobile Smart Client development
Why PPB ?
• Mobile Smart Client
– Application where client side business logic is
executed on device
– Persistent data storage on the device
– Application can be executed at any time, even without
a wireless connection
– Integration to the enterprise is typically provided via
synchronization
– Client application communicates data to the back end
via a synchronization server
Enterprise Mobile Applications
• Identifying a candidate for a mobile application
• For existing systems…
• Not replace but extend
• What advantage or +ve impact?
• User needs
• Current inefficiencies
Not just a Port or conversion !
Enterprise Mobile Applications
• Identifying common functionality
Existing System
• Greatest common
denominators of functionality
• Some functionality may not
be practical for mobile users
Common functionality
Mobile Sysytem
Enterprise Mobile Applications
• Key areas for a mobile application
• Usability (including intuitiveness, efficiency, ease of use &
reliability)
• Innovation (including New Functionality) – maybe from
using mobile technologies
• BPI (including extending existing systems) – it should fit
well into existing business processes
• ROI – As always a return on investment is a major factor
Enterprise Mobile Applications
• Potential Systems for Mobile Applications
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Data Collection
Inventory Management
Customer Relationship Management
Event Tracking
Sales Force Automation
Healthcare
• Field Force Automation
• Sales Force Automation
• Mobile Healthcare
Pocket PowerBuilder Overview
• Productive 4GL IDE
– Supports complete development
cycle
– Rich component set
– Visual development with minimal
coding
– Currently based on the PB8 code
line
• DataWindow control
– Single component providing
sophisticated data representation
– Built in SQL for selects, updates,
inserts and deletes
Current GA v 1.5
Pocket PowerBuilder Overview
• BTW
– SalesDB Tutorial
Pocket PowerBuilder Overview
• DataWindow Control
– Advanced control for displaying
and manipulating data
• Available in many formats
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Freeform
Graph
Grid
Group
Tabular
• Reuse existing DataWindows
with little effort
Pocket PowerBuilder Overview
• PowerScript
– Powerful OO language
• Inheritance
• Polymorphism
• Overloading & Overriding
– Event driven
– Based on Basic/Pascal
– User Events
– User Functions
– User Objects
• Visual
• Non Visual
Pocket PowerBuilder Overview
• Tight Integration with SQL Anywhere Studio
– Easily develop mobile “smart client” applications with ASA
– Forte’ is the occasionally connected database application
(necessary for wireless use)
– Integration with MobiLink for data synchronization
• Other Database Drivers After 1.5 GA
Pocket PowerBuilder Overview
• Rich Set of components
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Command Button,
Picture Button,
CheckBox,
Radio Button,
Static Text,
List View,
Tree View,
List Box,
DropDown List Box,
Edit Mask,
Single Line Edit,
MultiLine Edit,
Progress Bar,
Scroll Bars,
Line, Oval, Rectangle, Tabs, and many, many more!
Plus the ability to create new components!
PPB vs. PB
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Unsupported Functions within
OLE,
DDE,
CORBA,
Profiling,
Printing,
Rich Text and a few more.
Unsupported Events contain
help(),
closequery(),
anything to do with remote (example remoteexec()),
hotlinkalarm() and toolbarmoved().
PPB vs. PB
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Unsupported Features
MDI applications,
EAServer CORBA connections,
Web and JSP targets,
and Automation server.
NO PFC !
PPB vs. PB
• Unsupported DataWindow
types
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Composite
Crosstab
Label
N-Up
OLE2.0
RichText
PPB vs. PB
• Environment variables
• In both products, the enumerated types for the
Environment object returned by a GetEnvironment call
include the OSType and CPUType.
• Pocket PowerBuilder has additional values for the
GetEnvironment OSType and CPUType.
• For a Pocket PC platform, the value returned for the
GetEnvironment OSType is "WindowsCE!" and the value
returned for the CPUType is "ARM!".
• ORCA Script
• Both PB & Pocket PowerBuilder ship with ORCA Script
as of v1.5
PPB vs. PB
• System functions for SIP
• Pocket PowerBuilder has system functions to control the
display of the Soft Input Panel (SIP) on a Windows CE
device or emulator
• Function
• SetSIPPreferredState
the Pocket PC or
Description
Displays or hides the SIP used on
emulator
• SetSIPType
Specifies the SIP panel type
(keyboard or character recognizer)
used by the application on a Pocket
PC or emulator
New Controls
With PDA Things like Rich Ink control…
New Controls
With PDA Things like DatePicker
control…
New Controls
With PDA Things like Notification Bubble…
New Controls
• Other Native controls
• HP 5400 & 5500 Series Biometric Fingerprint Scanner
• Symbol Barcode Scanner
Different Functionality
• Upper-Right Corner Window Controls
• Changed for PDA Standards.
ok
Close the window,
or the entire application
X
Smart-Minimize,
to minimize the window or entire
application.
Window
or
Application
Close
Window Title
Menu At
Bottom
SIP
Keyboard
Different Functionality
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Window Concepts are Different
NO MDI
“main!” and “response!” Windows Only
No Mouse
– Seldom Use “drag and drop”
– Seldom Use “mouse move”
– Left & Right Click events mapped to
“tap” & “tap-hold” gestures
Different Functionality
• Menu Concepts are Different
• Space Limitations
– Width is 6 items MAX
• Some Event Differences
– Top level items don’t get a “menu event”
– Sub-Menus DO…
• Toolbar is a separate object
– In PB toolbar is a MDI Menu property
– In PPB Toolbar has a separate object
‘painter’
– Can be at top or bottom
Different Functionality
• Synchronization
• Pocket PowerBuilder also surpasses
PowerBuilder with the introduction of a
MobiLink wizard
• Generates PowerScript code (NVO’s) &
Windows for within your application, to
interact with a MobiLink Server.
• PPB VM
• pkvm15u.dll has a footprint of 3.8MB !
Different Functionality
• Adaptive Server Anywhere mobile database
– Uses full data storage capabilities of Adaptive Server Anywhere
on Windows CE client
– Database access via ODBC
• MobiLink data synchronization
– MobiLink bi-directional data synchronization used to integrate
with other enterprise databases (Sybase ASE and ASA, Oracle,
MS SQL Server, IBM DB2)
– New component to manage synchronization properties &
maintenance of synchronization
POOM
Different Functionality
FindApointment
FindNextAppointment
RemoveAppointment
GetAppointment
GetAppointments
etc
SameForContacts
SameForTasks
• Integration with POOM
– Pocket Outlook Object Model
– POOM is the key to the Pocket
Outlook object managers
repository
– This repository is the object
store for the Pocket PC contact
manager, appointment manager
& task manager.
– So with the POOM object &
Pocket PowerBuilder we can
now enquire, access, create,
update & delete contacts,
appointments and tasks
programmatically from within
Pocket PowerBuilder
applications in a very 4GL way.
POOMContact
FirstName
LastName
Address1
Address2
etc
POOMAppointment
POOMTask
Start
Duration
Recurrence
Subject
Body
etc
Subject
Body
DueDate
Reminder
Recurrence
etc
POOMRecipient
POOMRecurrence
Name
Address
DayOfMonth
DayOfWeek
Interval
EndDate
etc
Different Functionality
• Today Item
– In PPB, the custom Today item and its
parameters are part of the Application
object, and you can use the Application
painter to set Today item properties.
– The Today Item means several things from
being a way of displaying data from a
Pocket PowerBuilder Application onto the
Display screen, to being a glorified shortcut
to a Pocket PowerBuilder application, as
well and even a combination of the two.
Different Functionality
• Today Item
– Two types of applications are needed for
Today Items, they are the Display
Application & the Run Application.
– If you have both a Display Application and a
Run Application that each will have its own
instance of the Pocket PowerBuilder VM
loaded as the Today Screen has its own
memory space and no communication can
take place.
Developing an Application
• Design & Develop with the Pocket PowerBuilder IDE on a
PC.
• Test on the PC with the
– Pocket PowerBuilder IDE,
– Pocket PC emulator (especially if you’re not the lucky developer
with a Pocket PC device)
– Pocket PC device itself.
• Deploy to the Pocket PC device via ActiveSync for final
testing, user acceptance etc.
• Distributed finally as CAB files
Application Deployment
• Pocket PowerBuilder applications can be run on the
mobile device in two ways:
– 1) Using the ‘stub’ application that is installed into the Pocket PC
start menu as Pocket PowerBuilder 1.0
– 2) By clicking directly on the application .exe (which is put into the
..\windows directory by default)
• Deployment Platforms
– ARM based Pocket PC devices
• This covers all devices coming out with Pocket PC 2002 &
Windows Mobile 2003 operating systems
– MIPS, SH3 chipsets are not supported as device manufacturers
have all but stopped making these devices
Application Deployment
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With Pocket PC Development… Distribution!
• Achieved by the Pocket
PowerBuilder interface to
Microsoft's CABWIZ, in the project
painter.
• This enables the automatic
creation of your .EXE & .PKD's
into distributable .CAB files.
• The CAB generation process also
generates an .INI file for creating a
setup.exe.
• This uses the OpenSource
EZSetup
• The distributable Pocket
PowerBuilder files (VM etc) are
installed with the IDE and can be
distributed separately from your
application.
PPB Application Architecture
SOAP
Device
(Web Services)
Enterprise
App Server
Sample
Application)
Pocket
PowerBuilder
Virtual
Machine
ASA
ML
TCP/IP
HTTP
HTTPS
ActiveSync
(wired or wireless)
MobiLink
Consolidated
Database
(Sybase/Oracle/
Microsoft/IBM)
Demonstrations
• Basic Pocket PowerBuilder App
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Use the wizard to generate an application
Build a DataWindow Object
Place objects on the window
Code PowerScript
Deploy
Run
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
• Basics
– PPB provides a wizard to import an existing PB application into
the PPB environment.
– Objects developed in PPB can be exported for import into PB.
– Migration from PB to PB is very easy
– Make sure your PB code conforms to PPB before opening it in
the PPB IDE, as it may not open!
– Don't worry too much as those nice guys in engineering have
given up a facility to change & compile source code in PPB
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
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File Extensions that differ
File type PB extension
Workspace
PBW
Target
PBT
Library
PBL
Dynamic library PBD
Resource file
PBR
PPB extension
PKW
PKT
PKL
PKD
PKR
• The file name for the Pocket PowerBuilder initialization
file is PKU.INI.
The U stands for Unicode.
• PowerBuilder supports ANSI character sets.
• Pocket PowerBuilder primarily supports Unicode,
although it does allow you to import and export files with
ANSI character sets
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
• From PPB to PB
• PPB provides a wizard to export an existing PPB
application into the PB environment.
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
• With Pocket PC Development… size matters !
• Pocket PC devices has 80 - 85% less viewable area than a 1024 x
768 average screen. PPC screen size is 320 x 240 pixels
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
• With Pocket PC Development… watch out for the differences !
• Some events/actions that we take for granted on PC are not part of
the Pocket PC platform, such as right click.
• There is no MDI support, so developers tend to code one window
with TAB controls as a way of getting around this problem.
• Menu's are also on the bottom of the screen, but act as menus in
Windows.
• Window persistence will be an initial design challenge to the Pocket
PowerBuilder developer, as when Pocket PC apps are closed, via
the window like X in the top right hand corner of the application, they
are actually minimized and stay resident in the device memory
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
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With Pocket PC Development… watch out for Performance!
Intel XScale processor is the fastest CPU being used by PPC
Next generation of StrongARM processor
ARM v5 instruction set compatible with StrongARM
200 – 400 MHz, better than MIPS, SH3 & ARM
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Limiting factors for Pocket PC development
No Math Co-Processor – Stay away from heavy computations !
Pocket PC 2002 - OS not optimized for Xscale
Windows Mobile 2003 lean & mean !
Migrating PowerBuilder Applications
• RAM, which is 32-128 MB (dependant on the
device & model purchased) is not only used for
storage of the data on your device but also for the
memory whilst running applications.
• Trade off on storing a lot of information &
applications with how many you can run.
• Pocket PC devices can extend their storage
capability by using Compact Flash or Secure
Digital Memory cards.
• Information and applications can be stored on the
Memory card, freeing up the RAM for running
programs on the device.
With Pocket PC Development… watch out for Performance!
• TechWave Application
Demonstrations
View all sessions
Filter by Instructor, Product Focus, Track & Day
View conference maps
Add sessions to your own agenda
Originally had facility for session evaluation
Does not use
Synchronization
First mass deployed
PPB application
• Pocket myPortfolio
Demonstrations
Create Portfolios, Details, Alerts & Shares
View current Portfolio Values
View current Share Prices & History
Alert notification
Update Share prices via PocketSOAP & XMethods
webservice
Uses Synchronization
& has PB client
• Pocket Waiter
Demonstrations
Allocate table to customer, take order & order
payment
View Menu, Specials & Reservations
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Uses Synchronization
& has PB client
• Biometric App
Demonstrations
Train 10 fingers to represent 10 presidents
Information stored in ASA
Random fingers matched to President
Uses HP’s Biometric
API & Scanner
Conclusions
• Pocket PowerBuilder is the smallest,
err… I mean biggest thing to happen
in the realm of PowerBuilder & Pocket
Device Application development in a
long while.
• Never has such a highly productive
4GL, with the additional strength of the
DataWindow, been made available for
developers of hand held mobile
applications.
Pocket PowerBuilder Code Examples
• Pocket PowerBuilder code examples can be found on the
CodeXchange, http://pocketpb.codexchange.sybase.com
Questions and
Ian Thain
Answers
Pocket PowerBuilder Evangelist
PTOG Evangelist Team, Sybase Inc.
ian.thain@sybase.com
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