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.
Upcoming Features
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. However, for all 2021 versions, we are skipping revisions and long-term support until the 2022 versions.
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 • Enhance UI Theme feature
Further enhance the UI Theme feature based on customer feedback.
• Resolve UI compatibility issues that are high priority
Ensure that the UI of PowerBuilder applications stays compatible with technological changes.
Focus Area: Core • Support the latest Windows OS/database versions
Support the latest Windows OS/database versions.
• Support .NET 6
Support PowerServer running on .NET 6.
• Call .NET 5 or .NET 6 assemblies
Support natively calling .NET 5 or .NET 6 assemblies from PowerScript.
• Resolve any security issues that are discovered
Resolve any security vulnerability issues that are discovered with the highest priority.
• HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3
Support the latest HTTP and security protocols HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3.
• Enhance REST API security
Connect to a RESTful Web API using a certificate file.
• Enhance NativePDF printing
Further enhance the NativePDF printing feature based on customer feedback.
• 64-bit runtime optimization
Enhance the performance and memory handling for 64-bit applications to take advantage of 64-bit architecture.
• Support GraphQL client
Use the GraphQL client to access GraphQL APIs.
Focus Area: Dev Productivity • Tabbed interface
Enable the IDE to display multiple opened editors in tabs rather than MDI.
• New code editor
Replace the existing code editor of the IDE with a new code editor that supports modern editing features.
• Enhance search capability
Make it more productive to search for objects or scripts in the IDE.
• 64-bit debugging
Enable the IDE to use the 64-bit PowerBuilder Runtime so that the debugger can be used with 64-bit applications.
• Installable cloud app debugging
Provide support for debugging PowerClient/PowerServer projects.
• Enhance Git/SVN
Support PBL generation from the source code, thus eliminating the need to upload PBLs to Git/SVN.
• IDE compilation environment upgrade
Compile the IDE using Visual Studio 2019 and resolve incompatibility issues.
SnapDevelop Roadmap
Focus Area: Cloud • Kubernetes deployment
Containerize and deploy apps to a Kubernetes cluster.
• Develop Node.js apps
Support developing with NodeJS to build server applications in JavaScript.
• Support microservices
Support building scalable microservices with gRPC, debugging and testing microservices.
Focus Area: UI • Develop HTML apps
Support various HTML UI technologies, including HTML & CSS, JavaScript, and TypeScript.
• Support leading HTML UI frameworks
Support leading HTML UI frameworks, including React, Angular, and Vue.
• Support Razor Pages
Support the development, compilation and deployment of Razor Pages in ASP.NET Core.
• Support mobile development
Support developing mobile clients using React Native.
Focus Area: Core • Support .NET 6
Support .NET 6 for development, debugging, and deployment.
Focus Area: Dev Productivity • Cross-OS debugging and remote debugging
Debug apps running on Windows, Linux, and MacOS; or remotely debug apps running in a Docker container.
• MongoDB support in DB Server Explorer
Provide an easy way to explore and manipulate data in MongoDB.
.NET Datastore Roadmap
Focus Area: Cloud • DRDS (Distributed Relational Database Service)
Support direct connection with DRDS.
Focus Area: Core • Enhance data import/export
Refactor the import/export functions for achieving better performance.
• Enhance JSON handling
Provide a JSON library directly in SnapObjects for better handling of JSON.
Focus Area: UI • DataWindow UI attributes
Support exporting DataWindow UI attributes to .NET DataStore.