Hi Guys,
We are on the task of migrating an insurance application from client/server to n-tiers (hopefully not n-tears!) and We've chosen J2EE/Struts for presentation logic but when it comes to bussiness logic it's kind of delicate since it's a grown (15 yrs) and vey stable application writen in PowerBuilder so we'd rather to re-use that re-write all that code.
One of the solutions we are considering is to implement all the PowerBuilder procedures as PowerBuilder components, deploy them on an Sybase EAServer (this container has a PBVM and can execute this kind of components) then export each one of them as SOAP WebServices to be consumed finally by our Servlets/JSPs.
What do you think of this approach?
Should we re-write all the bussiness logic in a more modern platform?
Did anybody have any experience like this one?
What do you think of EAServer?
Thanks in advance.
Regards
guS

Hi Gustava,

It has been a long time since I used PowerBuilder...I think 5.0 or 6.0 was the last version I used. But something that was available at that time was something called web.pb. If your PB logic is not wrapped up in the UI but is in regular objects with web.pb you could invoke them that way.

Just a thought...it might not be a good one...or maybe web.pb is not even a product anymore.

Mike

Thanks Michael,
I've checked the sybase site to learn about this Web.PB creature and found that it was part of something called PowerBuilder Distributed Functionality.
Then found another post on the sybase site.
"PowerBuilder 7 was the last version of PowerBuilder that incorporated distributed PowerBuilder functionality. Sybase recommended the use of EAServer in place of distributed PowerBuilder for distributed and Web applications in PowerBuilder 7 and later"
So I think we'll go for the WebServices.
Thanks anyway, Regards
guS

Hi Gustavo,
We had many issues related to refreshing the objects once changed and re-deployed. Also, it use to hang in-between many times and were forced to restart.
Have you been through the EA Server tencnically ?
We have been into PB development for quite some time.
We might also think for a migration... please share your experience ...

Thanks & Regards,
Amit

Hi Amit and Gustavo,

I have been developing web applications with PowerBuilder (most of which were conversion of client-server to web) since past 5 years. We have become one of industry leaders in PowerBuilder to the Web migration and our opensource framework (EAF) has become a defacto standard for web applications with PowerBuilder and EAServer. Sybase included our framework in the box with PB 10. If you have seen the box, you will find the EAF CD inside the box.

I would be more than happy to give more details about the technology and answer any questions that you might have regarding it. I personally feel very confident about the technology and the platform. PowerBuilder 8, 9 and 10 all are very stable and EAServer 5 has some good enchancements for webservices.

Amit, as for your issues, are you seeing those issues with EAServer? I have not seen issues with EAServer and PB components. Are you using the DW generator that is supplied by Sybase? IMHO, that is not the greatest solution. I will be happy to assist you if you have any questions.

Feel free to contact me directly or through Cynergy or Sybase newsgroups.

Regards,
--
Rahul Jain
Cynergy Systems
rahul.jain@cynergysystems.com

Hope I am not too late in replying... Distributed PB support was stopped in PB 7 primarily because PB fully supported EAServer and that was a better solution.

--
Rahul Jain

Hi Gustava,It has been a long time since I used PowerBuilder...I think 5.0 or 6.0 was the last version I used. But something that was available at that time was something called web.pb. If your PB logic is not wrapped up in the UI but is in regular objects with web.pb you could invoke them that way. Just a thought...it might not be a good one...or maybe web.pb is not even a product anymore.Mike

You are right Mike, web.pb is not available anymore. But much has changed since you saw PB. The current version is 10. Web development with PB has become much easier. PB can consume webservices, call EJBs on other applications services (including websphere and weblogic), supports EAServer components, supports XML, has PBNI (so you can natively use C++ code), support calling Java classes from PB, PDF generation is inbuilt, hmm... those are the only ones I remember right now :). Oh yes, it also supports Pocket PC development and DW.NET can be used with .NET. PocketBuilder (PowerBuilder for PocketPC) was awarded as best development tool for PocketPC development in 2004.

I welcome you to take a look at the latest version of PowerBuilder. Let me know if you would like to get a link.

Regards,
--
Rahul Jain
rahul.jain@cynergysystems.com

guS,

As I replied in the other post in this thread, EAServer is a great platform and we have been very happy with it. We have a number of clients who have been using EAServer.

As for your your architecture on using webservices for PB components - you can directly call PB components on EAServer from your JSP/Servlets without exposing them as webservices. This would be faster than SOAP.

IMHO, rewriting the entire logic that has matured over the 15 years is not a great idea. YOu have talent and current setup which can be reused. Throwing away the entire code is not the best solution.

I would be glad to give you some pointers that we give to our clients helping in conversion. Let me know if you are interested.

Regards,
--
Rahul Jain
rahul.jain@cynergysystems.com

guS,

As I replied in the other post in this thread, EAServer is a great platform and we have been very happy with it. We have a number of clients who have been using EAServer.

As for your your architecture on using webservices for PB components - you can directly call PB components on EAServer from your JSP/Servlets without exposing them as webservices. This would be faster than SOAP.

IMHO, rewriting the entire logic that has matured over the 15 years is not a great idea. YOu have talent and current setup which can be reused. Throwing away the entire code is not the best solution.

I would be glad to give you some pointers that we give to our clients helping in conversion. Let me know if you are interested.

Regards,
--
Rahul Jain
rahul dot jain at cynergysystems dot com

<a href="http://www.search24online.org">SEO Expert</a>

Hi,

I totally agree with Raghul Jain, do not throw all the logics, which would got settled and stable as of now. Thinking to reuse the same in a better way. Web does not mean only Java, say if IE (microsoft) decided to ship the IE along with powerbuilder VM along with it, then you can do pb scriping even in the front end (browser), we tried talkint to microsoft and they refuse to ship it along with IE (they are currently shipping Jscript, VB script and java script VM's).

Coming to resolve your issue, it is very easy and advisible to move the powerbuilder logics (NVO's) to EAServer and migrate the front end logic in to HTML/DHTLL/JSP.

Probably, you can visit www.ewaksoft.com, we have simple migration mechanism to migrate pb applications to web. In fact you can assess the effort required before even sending the source code to the company. We have a tool to assess the existing pb code to give the estimation report http://www.ewaksoft.com/html/codeanalyser.html

Visit http://www.ewaksoft.com/html/automatic.html to understand the business model

Thanks & Regards,
ve.ramesh.babu@ewaksoft.com

Hi rahul, i am currently working on PB to java(web application) project in my company. but i am not able to start it.. can u plz provide me any tools name which i can download and use them for converting PB to java. Our PB application is very vast and complex. i am trying to mail u also, but your SMTP server is not allowing any mails from outside. could u plz provide me any personal mail id of urs? can u plz give me the procedures, which i can follow. Murtaza Ghodawala murtaza.ghodawala@cognizant.com

Hi Rahul, In our project we're planning to migrate PB to .Net/ Java Migration. Can you please send me if u have any prototype or some documents on reusable framework on PowerBuilder to .Net / Java Migration? Thanks, Bala tmbalas at yahoo dot com balasubramani_thiruneirmalai@satyam.com

Please contact our sales department at sales@metex.com

I saw a post of yours at http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=31121

We have a PB 7 application that we’re porting to Java.  We're looking for atool taht can generate Java from all the business logic code we have to assist us in the migration. 

 

We’re using a combination of STRUTS and SPRING frameworks and the JQuey Aerowindow framework plugin.

JavaScript Aerowindow framework

http://archive.plugins.jquery.com/project/aerowindow

 

Do you know of any migration utilities that we can use to port the PowerBuilder business logic code to Java?

 

Thanks!