Hoyt Nelson

A typical PowerBuilder application has a few zillion MessageBox() calls. This article explains how you can roll your own MessageBox() function, replacing the native PowerBuilder MB() function with your code. Why would you want to write your own MB() function? The general reason is to give you a "hook" where you can write code to modify the native Windows MB() behavior. Let's face it, the MB() has evolved about as rapidly as the shark, like, not at all since PB 1.0. And the MB() needs to evolve. Among the native MB()'s deficits: It provides no way to get the text: you can't copy the text on a MB() into the clipboard. It handles long messages badly: the buttons are below the bottom of the screen; and Most aggravating, the PB MB() doesn't display if either its title or text is NULL! How many times have you been burned by that last "feature"? Doh! For these and other rea... (more)

Using Overloaded Functions to Determine Object Types

Overloading allows two or more functions to have the same name and return type, if their signature is different. The function signature is defined by its number and types of arguments. When you call an overloaded function, PowerBuilder decides which version of the function to call based on the function signature. This can be exploited to determine an object's type at runtime. This article presents a couple of practical applications of this technique, and describes a third situation where a different technique is required. Technique 1: Validating Arguments I first used this metho... (more)

Managing PowerBuilder Source

How does your organization manage its PowerBuilder source? Your application has several PBLs containing several hundred objects. Do you use the native PowerBuilder check-in/checkout? Do you employ a "real" revision control system, such as Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe? These traditional techniques don't work for our organization because we do a lot of off-site development. Developers may be traveling, writing code in the plane or at the client site. A couple of us routinely work from home where we don't have remote access to the office network. Therefore we apply a rather Neande... (more)

Fixing Ugly Grid Borders

It's an aesthetic thing. When you click on a grid DataWindow label and change an attribute, it acquires what are formally termed UGBs - Ugly Grid Borders. They appear between the labels in the grid header. The vertical lines are thin or thick. Inconsistency! Thick borders! Yuck! Figure 1 illustrates the problem. There are thick borders between the Nickname and Last Name labels and between the Company and Nickname columns; there are thin borders between the Company and Nickname labels and between the Nickname and Last Name columns. Figure 2 shows the same DataWindow with the UGBs ... (more)

PBSearch v3.1 by TopWiz Software

Roland Smith's PBSearch utility is the tool to turn to when you need to find a string in your PowerBuilder application. For example, if you have an error message from a bug report, it takes PBSearch only a few seconds to find all the instances of that message. Similarly, if you want to see usage examples for a given function, PBSearch will quickly find and show you the places where that function is called in your application. As such, PBSearch is analogous to the Object Searcher in the Advanced PowerBuilder Utilities that Sybase used to distribute with PB. PBSearch is much faste... (more)