One common piece of functionality in many business applications is the ability to import data from an external source. This could be anything from invoices and orders to inventory forecasts and patient medical histories. Quite often if this type of process is not considered in a generic context you end up with a solution which…
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PowerBuilder ‘Gotcha’ – SQL Errors
Most applications I’ve worked on make at least a limited attempt to inform the user of any database related errors especially after an insert, update, and (usually) a commit. Along with this is normally code which displays the database error from the transaction object in a messagebox. Unless you use a custom messagebox with a…
Development tools at Home
Here is a list of some of the software I use at home. avast! Free Antivirus (www.avast.com) Fine antivirus program at no charge. XnView (www.xnview.com) Free image and graphic file viewer/converter. FileZilla Client (filezilla-project.org) Open Source FTP. Microsoft Visual Studio (www.microsoft.com/express) Great set of tools to use (I use Visual Basic/C# and SQL Server mostly). …
PowerBuilder: Transparent MDI Frame
I’m working on an MDI application which uses an mdi frame (naturally) with a sheet (window type: Main!) which normally covers the entire working area of the frame. This window serves as a large ‘sitemap’ of the over all application. One of the windows of the application displays time sensitive data (could be orders, deliveries,…
PowerBuilder – User Customization Service
Here is an easy to implement user customization service you can add to your Powerbuilder applications which stores configuration information in a database. This gives the added benefit of portability to the users as nothing is stored in files or the registry. It is PFC based but, with minor modifications, could be un-coupled from that…
Easy ANSI Join Conversion
Like many MS SQL users way back when I learned the standard syntax for selectstatements: SELECT customer.custId , customer.custName , address.addrType , address.addrAddress1 , address.addrSddress2 , csz.cszCity , csz.cszState , csz.cszZip , order.ordOrderNo , order.ordOrderDate , order.partId , part.partDesc FROM customer , address , csz , order , part WHERE address.custId = customer.custId AND csz.cszId…
Tools I use to get my work done.
This is a listing of the tools I use frequently at my job to get things done faster and more effectively. Notepad++ (www.notepad-plus-plus.org) – editorA great open source editor with great deal of customization and functionality built in. Might as well get the ‘Poor Mans SQL Formatter’ plug in while you are at it. SSMS…
PowerBuilder ‘Gotcha’ – Datawindow retrieval arguments
So I’m working on a scheduling process and I have a datawindow object which takes a number of arguments.I have them set up as al_pro_id (long), adt_end (datetime), adt_start (datetime), al_resource_id[] (long array), and al_dept_id (long). To save from maintaining two separate objects, I used this object for a datawindow as well as for datastores…
PowerBuilder – ‘Plug in’ Applications
I helped develop a special order processing application which was both a stand alone application as well as a ‘plug in’ into a couple of existing apps. By ‘plug in’ I mean the same windows and functionality was brought into the existing applications without any significant changes. Part of the trick in doing this is…
PowerBuilder – Method to add minutes to a Datetime
This is a method to add any number of minutes to a datetime to obtain a second datetime. Although not as ‘elegant’ as the SQL Server cursor methods, it does avoid any database calls. global type f_add_time_to_datetime from function_object end type forward prototypes global function datetime f_add_time_to_datetime (datetime adtm_start, long al_minutes) end prototypes global function…
