PowerBuilder unofficial RoadMap
This is a screenshot of the roadmap seen in the PBTV webinar of July, for those who did not attend it.
There were no official from SAP, so the presenters insisted on the fact that it is not official.
It was also mentioned that PB Native is the new name for PB Classic.
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SHAME ON SAP - THAT THEY ARE NOT PROVIDING ANY INSIGHT INTO PB FUTURE. RAN OUT OF STUPID EXCUSES AND WENT INTO HIDING.
It's the same roadmap from 2012 + the IDE overhaul.
http://www.sybase.com/files/Thankyou_Pages/RoadmapPowerBuilder.pdf
In April I was told that PB 15 would have been out on Q4...
It's two years we've been waiting for something new.
We still have a 12.5 Powerbuilder with -30% performance .NET code
You mean 30% slower in PB.NET than in PB classic ?
Ask Chris Pollack about this. Probably 30% is an overstatement, but it's slightly slower.
I easily believe you, but I gave up migration before comparing performance.
PowerBuilder is still in the process of getting onto the SAP price list. This is why there's been no market-visible movement toward the next release. Getting onto the SAP price list is a prerequisite for a number of subsequent steps to take place; roadmap approval, R&D budget approval, sales force authorized to sell, etc.
We need to be more vocal in demanding the next release. SAP needs to assign a new VP to PowerBuilder. It may need to come from Business Intelligence, so we need to get their attention.
"We need"? SAP needs.
There has been no market-visible movement for two years.
If SAP doesn't do something fast, Powerbuilder will die soon.
Companies already are migrating or rewriting software for other platforms.
Platforms which cost less, have more support and have a serious roadmap.
I read that price list story several times, but don't understand it, in Sybase.com online store, PowerBuilder has a public price : 2 439.80€
Sybase was acquired by SAP three years ago, so why PB is not in this list yet ?
Is it possible that it never get onto ?
Waiting to getting on the Price list is a STUPID Excuse not to do anything!
If it was a month a two long excuse it would be fine but it has been a YEAR!
WE NEED ANSWER FROM SAP ASAP.
SIGN THE PETITION TODAY.
Ok... So how long this process will take? About an estimate? If you tell me they need another year, this wont be serious.
Sincerly.
Andreas.
Once SAP makes PowerBuilder open source, do we have a team or company that would work on improving it? Perhaps, hire existing sybase developers that were working on powerbuilder development.
There is novalys, appeon or US development that could take over.
any thoughts?
We've had this discussion before.....
The question is would you but up funding for development? If the answer is no then why would anyone including SAP?
The problem is that the PB community is all noise and no money. The majority do not buy support so where is the revenue going to come from?
A waste of time and effort IMHO
Agreed.
For starters, SAP or whoever takes over needs to streamline by doing end of life on all older versions of PB than the current one. Only current version needs to be updated and supported.
Make pb.net solid by having better migration path from pb classic. The reason why most people are still on classic including me is because the migration is not easy and the errors cannot be resolved.
Get rid of PB Classic - it cannot compete with .net, VS IDE
For all the languages that Visual studio supports, NOT ONE had any migration path, no Visual Basic to VB.NET, C++ to C#, etc. utility. PB was the only language to support it. Given the shift in interface paradigm, Sybase should get credit for that accomplishment. Once you get it into PB.NET, you have to figure out how to go from there, but at least you have your code. Imagine the refactoring and recoding without the migration utility that M$ never offered for their own.
Dot NET isn't the rage it once was. It's not going to disappear, but one could argue with 20/20 hindsight that HTML5 might have been the better fork in the road map to take. If so, commitment to PB.NET migration might be a mistake. PB native can deploy to Appeon and give web and Mobile migration.
I've seen an oil company make a 6-year $140 million mistake trying to replace a Win32 PB app with C# and VS. They could rewrite it from ground up and do it right. It failed catastrophically and could not scale to 1 user. A 3rd-party consultant estimated another $60 million to make it work. I don't see evidence that PB can't compete.
I still haven't seen any signs that indicate that HTML5 can support enterprise LOB applications. Until it does, I don't see that as the road map to take given that's what PB is largely used for.
Hi Jeff,
I agree that we have to give credit to Sybase for that migration path, the only problem is that the path is hard to go through, the new IDE is not really stable, and is slower.
That's the main reason that disappoints me about this roadmap : nothing about Pb.NET.
I wonder if SAP does not consider it as a bad strategy since once you have done the migration you won't need PB so much : you could use VS to enhance your app.
About .NET and HTML5, I can't see them as one or the other, but complementary, an ASP.NET target should have been great. Appeon is succeeding where Sybase failed and SAP seems ok with that : they removed WebForms target of the product, they removed web and mobile deployment targets of the roadmap.
Like you said, rewrite a consequent application in C# and VS is almost impossible, too expensive and it can't be done progressively, that's why we dramatically need PB enhancements.
Regards
Guillaume
When I first heard news of the acquisition of Sybase by SAP, I really hope that Microsoft will acquire Sybase, not SAP.
Agreed. Microsoft would have been a PERFECT Match.
We are stuck with STUPID PEOPLE AT SAP
PB would be a perfect replacement for SAP Query! Please!