One challenge for Powerbuilder developers today is the lack of current information/programming tips relating to more current (10 and above) versions. This also applies to Windows versions as well. There are a variety of different solutions to having an application icon in the System Tray but almost without exception they relate to Windows 95/98 primarily.…
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PowerBuilder – Application Icon in the System Tray
PowerBuilder – Application Icon in the System Tray - the full story »
PowerBuilder – Calling Methods on Separate Windows
If you need to trigger and event or call a function on another window within an application, here are two solutions. In you have an MDI application you need to get a reference to the sheet. The PFC has a method to get the sheets of a certain class called ‘of_getsheetsbyclass’. You call it and…
PowerBuilder – Dragging Files onto the Application
Many applications I’ve worked on have had internal drag/drop capabilities. By ‘internal’ I mean you can drag items from one place to another from within the application itself. Now what if you want to drag files from an explorer window into your application and perform some processing? This functionality is not as common. The solution…
PowerBuilder – Formatting and Validating Date/Time entries in a Datawindow
Using an editmask on a datawindow column to format a user’s input is pretty common practice for most applications. Done right it leads to a better user experience (no extra formatting characters to type) and can be visually appealing (all phone numbers formatted the same way for example). One really annoying behavior of an editmask…
PowerBuilder – Datawindow Filter on a datetime column
A question came in on the TekTips Powerbuilder forum regarding filtering on a datetime column in a datawindow. Basically the problem was a ‘type mismatch’ error when trying to filter this type of column. This is how the author was setting the filter: <code> ls_filter = "ls_column_name= '11/10/2010 12:30:00'" or ls_filter = "ls_column_name= '" +…
PowerBuilder – Changing Datawindow object source to stored procedure
So I had to update a report which deals with item prices in an application. Very familiar territory here. However, this report had a very large SQL statment consisting of five unions with many sub selects, case statements, and etc. The kind of code which, at first glance, looks like its held together with chewing…
PowerBuilder – Number of Characters Remaining in a String Column
A system I developed a while back was essentially a front end for a COBOL zSeries application (System 390 for you old timers). As such I had to make sure my data played nice with the VSAM files and the functionality my app was essentaily replacing. In one instance the users had the ability to…
PowerBuilder – Item counter for datawindow entries
This is a PFC based component I build for an application used to create purchasing requisitions. The main datawindow was used to enter new ‘documents’ and was too large to allow for more than one row to be visible at a time. Rather than use a common ‘vcr’ type control I created one which shows…
PowerBuilder – Window Object information service
Here is an easy to implement service geared towards developers who are working on complex, many layered applications. In its basic form it shows the current window object, which pbl it is located in, all the various ancestors of the window, their pbl locations, all datawindows and datawindow objects on the window, and the sql…
PowerBuilder ‘Gotcha’ – Malformed Imbedded SQL
I came across a statement like this while tracking down a separate issue and at first didn’t think much of it since it wasn’t related to the problem at hand. However, when running my process through the debugger I noticed a SQL error which caught my attention. <code>UPDATE dbo.shipperDetail SET contractId = (SELECT max(docId) FROM…
