Question:
The company I work for is nearly ready for e-business. We have developed lots of reusable business objects and I need to convert them into a format reusable/implementable in Web-enabled applications.
Using OO methodology, the business objects consist of interface and some business rules accessing Microsoft SQL Server RDBMS in providing its services. In deploying them, we use PBD, not DLL or OCX. Thus, in two-tier C/S architecture.
Knowing the above, what’s the better way to convert these objects for implementation in the Web? (The objects are written in PB5 but are migratable to PB7. The RDBMS is Microsoft SQL 6.5.)
Answer:
I have recently done the same thing. We had a client server application using all PowerBuilder 6.5 with an Oracle back end. We had used strong OO on the project with Non Visual Objects with all the business logic in them.
We migrated to PowerBuilder 7 and used EAServer to three-tier-enable the application. Then we used PowerDynamo to build a HTML front end for the application. After a few initial hiccups, it all worked like a dream. It is very easy to build and deploy the components to Jaguar. The Datawindow to HTML commands in PowerBuilder 7 make generating reports straight from your existing datawindows so easy, you would not believe it and the results are fantastic.
I cannot recommend the EAServer/PB7 combination enough.
