Roadmap Focus Areas
Appeon is committed to releasing, in agile 9-12 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
Dev 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.
Features List by Version
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 9-12 month cycles.
PowerBuilder/PowerServer Roadmap
Focus Area: Core • Support the latest Windows OS/database versions
Support the latest Windows OS/database versions.
• PDF Builder
• Support page-level operations to manage pages or insert page elements in PDFs;
• Support setting font color, size, and types for the text added in PDFs;
• Set PDF document properties and security;
• Compress PDF documents;
• Jump to a link in the PDF document;
• Add text or image watermark;
• Attach files to PDF.
• Native email client
• Enable direct connection to a mail server for email services;
• New SMTPClient object class in the system class;
• Support proxy settings;
• Support Text or HTML based email content and attachments;
• Allow asynchronous email server interaction;
• Can specify email priority and content encoding;
• Support OAuth, XOAuth, client certificate-based, and basic authentication.
• DropDownDataWindow/DropDownListBox filter
• Added for the DropDownListBox Edit Style feature;
• Added for the DropDownDataWindow Edit Style feature;
• Auto-populate the matching field value according to what’s entered in the control’s text field;
• Filter the matching options according to what’s entered in the control’s text field.
• Support .NET 6
Support .NET 6 data providers for SQL Server, Oracle, and ODBC database connections (besides continuing to support the native drivers). The 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;
• Support two WebView2 Runtime deployment options: Evergreen or Fixed Version.
• Provide the system HyperlinktoURL function
Provide a replacement for the HyperlinkToURL function of the obsolete Inet object.
• Enhance the Other event
Provide a custom event ID option for utilizing Windows event message IDs that are not included in the existing pbm_xxxx events list.
• Enhance the RichText Functionality
• Support the following form fields: CheckBox, ComboBox, Date, DropDownList, and Text;
• Support text frames;
• Enable the RightToLeft property;
• Allow inserting tables into documents or other tables.
• Support the Identity column for Oracle
• Support getting the value of the Identity column after a DataWindow update;
• Support the Identity column specified in the Update Properties.
Focus Area: Dev Productivity • 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.
• Update the Migration Assistant tool
• Enhance the tool to detect the features that have been obsolete/discontinued in recent versions;
• Give users proper suggestions to remediate their code.
Focus Area: UI • Tabbed document interface
Provide a configurable option to render MDI sheets in a tabbed view or classic view.
• Graph enhancements
• Added anti-aliasing in the graphs to minimize distortion;
• Added more modern fonts for better text display;
• Refined the graph lines to better indicate the values;
• More intuitive color selection to choose from;
• Improved how graphs display when used with or without UI Themes.
• Enhance UI Theme feature
Enable UI theme settings for standard visual user objects.
Focus Area: Cloud • PowerServer projects optimize the compilation and deployment process
• Separate the setup of development and production environments. The development environment no longer requires Web server configuration.
• Improve the performance of the incremental build.
• PowerServer projects support SQLPreview event
Provide better support for SQLPreview event (such as adding support for PreviewUpdate, PreviewInsert, and PreviewDelete) in PowerServer projects.
• PowerServer projects support DB2
Enable DB2 configuration for PowerServer projects, so that the deployed installable cloud apps can work with DB2.
• PowerServer projects display images by URL
During runtime, load images in a Picture, PictureButton, PictureHyperlink, and DataWindow control via URLs.
• PowerServer projects change the Web API URL by PowerScript
Make it possible to change the Web API URL of the application during runtime.
Focus Area: Core • Save DataWindow as Excel
Convert a DataWindow or DataStore to a Microsoft Excel file that will preserve the existing formatting in the DataWindow.
• RibbonBar simplification
Simplify the application of the RibbonBar to existing applications.
Focus Area: Dev Productivity • Enhance the Jump feature
Support clicking more types of code (such as functions and events) in the editor and then jumping to the definition.
• Enhance 64-bit development
Support directly calling 64-bit database drivers, OCXs, etc. in the Database Painter, DataWindow Designer, and Window Designer.
• Revamped IDE
• A modern code editor with typical modern editor features, such as collapsible code blocks, code assistance, code navigation, code refactoring, etc.
• 2D/flattened layout of the IDE
• Theme options for the IDE
Focus Area: UI • More modern UI controls
Provide the NavigationPanel control for navigation in applications; provide the Layout Splitter control that divides a display area (for example, a window, or a userobject) into multiple auto-resizeable panels.
• High DPI support
Enable the application UI to be modern is being DPI-aware and scaling its UI elements on bigger screens.
Focus Area: Cloud • PowerServer performance analyzer
A performance analyzer that can monitor and point out the operations in an application that have performance issues.
• PowerServer request inspector
Tool for inspecting each request sent to the PowerServer and the result sent back.