Sybase Inc. on Tuesday announced that it had updated PowerBuilder, its rapid application development (RAD) tool, with new features intended to make life easier for developers using the Java and Microsoft Corp. .Net environments to develop applications.
PowerBuilder 9.0 will include RAD JavaServer Page Targets, which will allow the development and deployment of JSP Web applications through wizards and other RAD tools, said Dave Fish, principal systems consultant at Sybase.
The software will also contain improved capabilities for building Web services, said Fish. After developers point to a .Net or J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file, PowerBuilder will detect the relevant Web services and ports, and generate the object code to access the Web services described in the WSDL file, said Fish.
PowerBuilder 9.0 will also include XML DataWindow, which will allow developers to import data directly from XML (extensible markup language) documents or as a document using XSL Formatting Objects (Extensible Stylesheet Language-FO) syntax or PDF (Portable Document Format), said Fish. In conjunction with third-party tools, XSL-FO makes it possible to import data into PowerBuilder from third-party applications such as Microsoft Word, he said.
In addition to supporting Sybase EAServer, PowerBuilder 9.0 will support BEA Systems Inc.'s WebLogic Server, IBM Corp.'s WebSphere and other J2EE application servers.
Available from March 24, PowerBuilder 9.0 Enterprise Edition will be priced at US$2,995 for new users and $1,495 for users upgrading from older editions of PowerBuilder, according to Fish.