Roadmap Focus Areas
Appeon is committed to releasing, in agile 6-12 month cycles, new product features to meet the evolving needs of our customers. These needs span maintaining existing client/server systems for the long haul to rapidly moving to the Cloud. In terms of roadmap, this gets translated into four key focus areas: sustaining core features, modernizing application UI, improving developer productivity, and incorporating more Cloud technology.
Priorities by Version
For each major version, Appeon prioritizes where it will invest the most engineering resources and what attributes of the product will receive the biggest changes. The priorities of a major version also apply to its subsequent revisions. While the priorities strongly shape the product, Appeon typically adds other new features and enhancements beyond the specified priorities.
PowerBuilder 2022
Runtime Performance - boost runtime performance of all project types, 32-bit client/server, 64-bit client/server, and PowerServer, through new features and internal optimizations.
Dev Productivity - Debug 64-bit client/server apps and PowerServer apps. Improve search capabilities. Optimize editor screen layouts.
Compatibility - Stay compatible with the latest third-party software, such as Windows OS, Databases, Web browsers, and .NET framework.
All New Features >Next Major Version
Productivity - Develop faster with a revamped IDE that offers a modern code editing experience. Some new features include code completion, code assistance, code navigation, and code refactoring.
Compatibility - Stay compatible with the latest third-party software, such as Windows OS, Databases, Web browsers, and .NET framework.
2022 Features List
Appeon typically introduces major new features in major versions of our products. We then revise a major version, based on customer feedback, a few times to enhance its key features, introduce new minor features, and arrive at a long-term support version.
The upcoming features we are disclosing is our minimum plan that is subject to change without notice. We are not able to publish a complete or detailed feature list, especially for revisions, since customer feedback has significant impact on our product plans. So use this information to gain a sense of what may possibly come in the near future, and you can see our progress in agile 6-12 month cycles.
PowerBuilder/PowerServer Roadmap
Focus Area: UI • Tabbed document interface
Provide configurable option to render MDI sheets in a tabbed view or classic view.
• Enhance Graph DataWindow
Support high resolution displays and render new modern look for existing graph types of the DataWindow.
• NavigationPane control
Provide a NavigationPane control for hosting clickable shortcuts to the most frequently accessed windows in the application.
• Enhance UI Theme feature
Enable UI theme settings for standard visual user objects.
Focus Area: Core • Support the latest Windows OS/database versions
Support the latest Windows OS/database versions.
• PDF Builder
• Allow to import or export the PDF building definition in XML;
• Support page-level operations to manage pages or insert page elements in PDFs;
• Support adding interactive elements including annotations, indexes, bookmarks or hyperlinks in PDFs;
• Support adding text, rich text, image, watermark, or stamp in PDFs;
• Support setting font color, size, and types for the text added in PDFs.
• 64-bit runtime optimization
Enhance the performance and memory handling for 64-bit applications to take advantage of 64-bit architecture.
• Native email client
Enable direct connection to mail server for email services.
• FTPClient object
Support directly sending and receiving files over FTP/FTPS/SFTP from the client.
• DropDownDataWindow/DropDownListBox filter
Automatically filter the DropDownDataWindow and DropDownListBox items based on the text entered in the field.
• Save Datawindow as excel
Convert a DataWindow or DataStore to a Microsoft excel file that will preserve the existing formatting in the DataWindow.
• QR code generation
Incorporate a QR code generation library for natively creating QR code in applications.
• Support .NET 6
Support .NET 6 data providers for database connections that use .NET Framework data providers (ADO .NET connections) shall be updated to use .NET 6 data providers.
• Use WebView2 for the WebBrowser control
Replace the WebBrowser engine with Microsoft Edge WebView2.
• Provide the system HyperlinktoURL function
Provide a replacement for the HyperlinkToURL function of the obsolete Inet object.
• Enhanced RichTextEdit Functionality
• Support user-defined type and shape for bullets and numbered lists;
• Provide formatting options for paragraph presentation in the right-mouse menu;
• Provide more dialog boxes with more functions, such as paragraph settings, text formatting, table formatting, stylesheet formatting and many more.
• Allow users to directly add or edit header or footer in the richtext editor;
• Support the creation, formatting and application of stylesheets;
• Support tables and text frames;
• Support various form fields such as checkboxes, dropdown boxes and form text fields;
• Allow users to insert a fully-featured table of contexts automatically based on inserted contents and their paragraph styles.
Focus Area: Dev Productivity • Enhance 64-bit development
Support directly calling 64-bit database drivers, OCXs, etc. in the Database Painter, DataWindow Designer, Window Designer.
• Enhance Git/SVN
• Provide access to the Git/SVN source control functions in the library painter;
• Allow users to download or upload application files using the TortoiseGit client;
• Show the lock status of files in SVN source control.
• Enhance the Jump feature
Support clicking more types of code (such as functions and events) in the editor and then jumping to the definition.
Focus Area: Cloud • PowerServer projects support SQLPreview event
Provide better support for SQLPreview event (such as, add support for PreviewUpdate, PreviewInsert, and PreviewDelete) in PowerServer projects.
• PowerServer projects support DB2 connection
Enable DB2 database connection for PowerServer projects.