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…
You are currently browsing all posts tagged with programming
PowerBuilder – Dragging Files onto the Application
PowerBuilder – Dragging Files onto the Application - the full story »
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 – 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…
My Favorite Programming Term
For a, thankfully, very brief time I was exposed to ‘Uniface’, the supposed ‘universal’ programming language currently offered by Compuware (in the early 2000’s). It does, however, make use of my now favorite programming term: $hits. From this source. (link gone dark) 3.3 setocc, currocc, totdbocc, $hits 3.3.1 Why should I be careful about using…
PowerBuilder – Window object resizer bar
Here is a fairly simple technique to allow for the resizing of objects on a window. Its best use is to provide a ‘splitbar’ type of control to dynamically shrink and enlarge the amount of space on a window a pair of datawindow objects occupy. If you really want to get fancy you will save…
Powerbuilder – PFC Resize Service Extension / Max Height & Width
The PFC window resize service is one of my favorite things in the entire class library as it can easily be implemented and adds a great bit of functionality to an application. One drawback, however, is there is no built in capability to limit the resizing of the objects on a window; either they resize…
Comment on Powerbuilder – PFC Resize Service Extension / Max Height & Width »
