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Happy 25th Birthday PowerBuilder!

June 16, 2016 | 48 Views |
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    Did you realize that PowerBuilder turns 25 on July 1st of this year. The product was released to Alpha in November of 1989, Beta in June of 1990, Release Candidate in February 1991 and 1st GA on July 1, 1991! This makes PB 25 years old!

FYI:  All About Powerbuilder: History of Powerbuilder

Happy Birthday PowerBuilder!

Regards …. Chris

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19 Comments

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  6. Chris Pollach Post author

    Who can forget Mr DataWindow … the guy that built this amazing object initially and the one who held the patent in the US Patent Office.

    DW Patent:  US Patent for Method for forming a reusable and modifiable database interface object Patent (Patent # 5,566,330 issued …

    Kim Sheffield Kim is a very shy guy.  😉

    It was a privilege knowing Kim at Cullinet Software where the PB prototype was first built around 1986. From there, I personally knew Kim at PowerSoft for many years!

    Say hi to Kim on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-sheffield-b1597a?trk=seokp-title_posts_secondary_cluster_res_author_name

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  7. Lars Mosegaard

    That long eh! Started with PB1.0A hand delivered by Klaus Petrat of PowerSoft Australia on diskette. We were only the second or third Australian customer. Time flies.

    Shipped with Gupta SQLBase. My favourite error message: “Not enough not nulls”

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    1. Chris Pollach Post author

      Very “Kool” Lars!   😎

      More trivia for you …

      1st customer – Royal Australian Air force.

      2nd customer – Microsoft (MS University Registration)

      Powersoft’s main PB R&D $ investor  – DEC

      =>DEC is the reason PB has Octal … “~o371” = ASCII character with octal value 371

          (because the VAX’s were base 8 machines) 😉

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    2. Chris Pollach Post author

      BTW: The PB v1.0A was known as the Canadian release …. 1.0 EH (pronounced “A”) !

      TYPE OF EH

      SAMPLE SENTENCE
      • Statement of opinion

      Nice day, eh?
      • Statements of fact

      It goes over here, eh?
      • Commands

      Open the window, eh?

      Think about it, eh?
      • Exclamations

      What a game, eh?
      • Questions

      What are they trying to do, eh?
      • To mean ‘pardon’

      Eh? What did you say?
      • In fixed expressions

      Thanks, eh?

      I know, eh?
      • Insults

      You’re a real snob, eh?
      • Accusations

      You took the last piece, eh?
      • Telling a story [the narrative   eh]

      This guy is up on the 27th floor, eh? then he gets out on the ledge, eh . . .

      From that point onward, I always asked Dave Litwack when the real Canadian working release was was due out … Version NNA –

      Image result for canadian eh  😛

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  11. David Peace

    More history & trivia

    Powersoft Computer Services is 30 years old on 1st August this year. I have always maintained that we are “The Powersoft” he he. 😆

    I remember well when Powersoft (US) first brought PB to the UK. They ran a marketing campaign in the press and did not put their phone number in the adverts! Someone was quite clueless there. 😉

    Our phones started falling off the walls as people looked up the phone number for Powersoft and found us….. we had to get 3 people to answer the phones, it was costing us a fortune. We booked a meeting with people from Powersoft (US) and when we gave them our marketing collateral with the strap-line “Total Solution from Powersoft” their faces hit the floor, as we explained that we were established before them. 🙂

    The phones never stopped ringing so we became a distributor in the UK. We started developing with PB version 5 as it was then. I think we evaluated PB4.PB was one of many products that I evaluated before developing “Total Solution Travel” or flagship product.

    Powersoft (US) started putting their phone number on adverts so our phones went back to normal.

    We danced around each other for a while over the name and then Powersoft (US) was bought by Sybase and the name clash went away… We have developed and supported PB applications ever since…. and the rest is history.

    A large portion of our business has come from PB, all our products are developed using PB we love it and our business has been heavily influenced by this great product!

    Long may it continue… 3 cheers for PB! 😘

    David Peace

    Technical Director

    Powersoft Computer Services Ltd.

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    1. Chris Pollach Post author

      Hi David;

        Thank you so much for sharing that great story!   🙂

      Image result for the force there is another yoda Wait … “There is another” …. Image result for appeon

      Hmmm .. the PB force is strong with this one!  😉

      Regards … Chris

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  12. Aron Cox

    Happy Birthday PowerBuilder, may you finally be looked after!

    I was living in Vancouver, Canada many, many years ago and I remember the PowerBuilder surge well. I switched from COBOL to PowerBuilder, and it took me quite a while to get my head around object-oriented programming. At one point I even managed to have my COBOL application call functions from PowerBuilder!

    I met many of the above evangelists and experts and I am very grateful to them for all the help they gave over the years to help us keep productive with PowerBuilder.

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  13. Ranjith Singh Lakshman

    Nice to wish PowerBuilder a very Happy Birthday. And many more years to come. I hope things will be carried forward.

    Chris, Dave, John and other Powersoft, Sybase, SAP and Now appeon (…) lover’s / Bread winners on PB I have met you guys in the presentations and Techwaves. feeling very happy to type this comments.

    Started PB from 1996 ( from v3…) and still continuing. Seen so many changes in the Corporate development strategies of either keeping old PB application or replacing it with other apps…Whatever may be the case I always loved using PB and never will stop…

    Being a computer science engineer always appreciated the product and it capabilities in RAD database development. Most of the time I was not able to sell project / product to the management and sometimes did…whatever the case always loved it.

    Happy Birthday PB and many more to come. 🙂

    Ranjith Singh Lakshman

    Software Engineer ( For Ever)

    Singh Technologies LLC

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  14. Da Sternberg

    Chris, many thanks to you and others for all those years of support through the forums.  I know you personally have helped me so many times and I am to forever PB indebted to you ;<0) 🙂

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