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Sybase today have released a new version of their premier Win32 and .NET development tool - PowerBuilder version 11.5.1. Although originally scheduled as a full maintenance release only, this point release also includes some new features as well. I thought that you might like to know about the new features ...
Deployment support for the Windows 2000 platform
- PowerBuilder 11.5.1 includes deployment and run time support for the Windows 2000 platform that was previously discontinued with the PowerBuilder 11.5 release
- Windows 2000 is not supported as a development platform, and run time support may be removed in future releases of PowerBuilder
JDK 1.6 Support
- PowerBuilder 11.5.1 applications and components include support for JDK1.6_02, that you can optionally install with the Sybase EAServer 6.2 setup program
FIPS 140-2 certification
- The development environment meets the encryption requirements of the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) as outlined in Publication 140-2 of the United States government's National Institute of Standards and Technology
- PowerBuilder embeds the Certicom 5.x cryptographic modules
- Support is certified for the PowerBuilder development environment only, not for run time applications that are built with PowerBuilder
- The FIPS 140-2 standard requires that passwords be encrypted
- The PowerBuilder 11.5.1 user interface displays all passwords as strings of asterisks
- Some files with passwords, such as database profiles, that you export from PowerBuilder 11.5.1, cannot be correctly imported into earlier versions of PowerBuilder
- However you can still import files containing unencrypted passwords from earlier versions of PowerBuilder
- When you save these files in—or export them from— PowerBuilder 11.5.1, the passwords are encrypted using a FIPS compatible method
Support for Microsoft Office 2007 Excel formats
- You can now save DataWindow and graph data in .XSLX and .XSLB (Excel12) format, with or without column headers
- .NET Framework 3.0 or later must be installed on development and runtime computers to use this functionality
- Cannot save data in these formats on Windows 2000 computers
- You can use the PowerScript SaveAs command with graphs or DataWindow controls to save data to Excel 2007 formats by setting the saveas type argument to XLSX! or XLSB!
- You can export DataWindow data to Excel 2007 formats by selecting one of the Excel12 items from the drop-down list in the Save As dialog box that displays when you select the Save Rows As menu item in the DataWindow painter
- Excel 2007 support is dependent on the following strongly named assemblies:
- Sybase.PowerBuilder.DataWindow.Excel12.dll This assembly is installed in the GAC
- PBDWExcel12Interop115.dll This assembly is installed in the Sybase/Shared/PowerBuilder directory
- These DLLs are deployed by the Run time Packager when you select the MS Excel12 Support check box
Support for SQL Anywhere 11.0 mirroring
- PowerBuilder 11.5.1 allows you to take advantage of SQL Anywhere 11.0 database mirroring
- Database mirroring is a configuration of either two or three database servers that cooperate to maintain copies of database and transaction log files
- If the primary server becomes unavailable because of hardware or software failure, the mirror server negotiates with the SQL Anywhere arbiter server to take ownership of the database and assume the role of primary server
Informix 11.5 Support
- PowerBuilder 11.5.1 applications and components work correctly with the Informix 11.5 DBMS through the I10 interface, although new Informix 11.5 features are not supported in this release
- You can use the 110 Informix v10.x database driver to connect to the Informix 11.5 DBMS, but this also requires that you upgrade the Informix client from Informix SDK 2.9 to Informix SDK3.5
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 support
- PowerBuilder 11.5 included support for many of the new SQL Server 2008 features, but the GA SQL Server product was not available for complete testing before the PowerBuilder release date
- These features have been tested with PowerBuilder 11.5.1. They are described in the New Features Guide for PowerBuilder 11.5, and in the online Help
