Intro
With 2024, Elevate returns to its previous post-COVID form. A two-day free online event with a call for papers and multiple technical session tracks running concurrently on the second day. This year they ran the Chat Café as 4 separate Zoom sessions running concurrently… more on that later.
Registration
Registration was basically the same process as it has been since COVID, which was available in May and you just indicated whether you were interested in attending. When the session catalog originally opened a week prior to the event (late November) there wasn't an option to automatically create calendar items. I believe that may have been resolved later, but by that time I had already manually created them in my calendar. There was a warning on the registration site that the schedule was still in flux and, sure enough, when I checked again the day before the event started a number of the sessions had been moved around. Not a huge deal, just something to be aware of.
Keynote
Armeen Mazda (Appeon CEO) once again gave his 30,000-foot view of what Appeon has been doing and will be doing with the product. One new item in this year’s presentation was a bit of a shout out to the Consulting Partners available to help customers with their PowerBuilder projects.
He was followed by Julie Jiang (Appeon Product Manager) who provided more of the nitty gritty details and results from the annual survey. She showed a product releases timeline as follows:
- 2024: Version 2025 Beta
- 2025: Version 2025 GA
- 2026 and 2027: Version 2025 R2 and R3 LTS
- Future: Next major version
She then showed a series of "Revamped Development" slides indicating 1) what was being delivered in 2025 GA, 2) what was being introduced in 2025 GA but would be enhanced in later revisions, and 3) what might be in future revisions that didn’t make it into the initial release of 2025. For brevity I'm going to summarize the slides rather than include screen shots since there were quite a few slides.
- Code view & edit
- Delivered in 2025
- Minimizing code conflicts
- Preserving DW update properties
- Enhanced search
- Delivered but plans to enhance in upcoming revisions
- Next-generation code editor
- Enhanced autoscript
- Considering for upcoming revisions
- IDE flat style and theme
- Git rebase support
- More jump support
- Database connectivity
- Delivered in 2025
- Database password encryptor
- ADO.NET support for PostgreSQL
- Delivered but plans to enhance in upcoming revisions
- ADO.NET support for ODBC
- Considering for upcoming revisions
- Enhance data type compatibility
- Testing & debugging
- Delivered in 2025
- Better test and debugging performance
- Single click to insert/remove breakpoints
- Considering for upcoming revisions
- More detailed logging
- Use dump file to pinpoint issues
- Build & compilation
- Delivered in 2025
- PBAutoBuild either in PBC mode or with JSON configuration file
- Delivered but plans to enhance in upcoming revisions
- Ultra-fast compiler
- Source code as text
- Considering for next major version
- 64-bit IDE
- Maintenance & updates
- Delivered but plans to enhance in upcoming revisions
- Supporting the latest OS
- Third party software upgrades
- Continuous bug fixes
- Considering for next major version
- Add support for ARM processors
- Decoupling the Runtime and IDE
- Ultra-fast compiler
- Separating PMVM and PB runtime
- Possibilities are all open
- Codeless UI modernization
- Continuously enhancing
- RibbonView for menu object
- High DPI Support
- Better multi-monitor display
- Enhanced UI themes
- Enhanced TabbedView
- Security
- Advanced executable security such as CFG, ASLR, DEP and SafeSEH
- Support IPv6
- PowerServer & HTTPClient – supporting Windows authentication
- Future refinements
- Implements misc. features based on user requirements
- Supports SVG format images
- (InfoMaker) SaveAs Excel headings as displayed
After that were the results from the annual survey:
2022 R3 LTS 46.0% 2022 or 2022 R2 19.0% 2019 R3 LTS 13.9% EOL Versions (2017-2021, 12.x or older 21.1%
What is the latest version of PowerBuilder you tried:
2025 Beta 22.90% 2023 R3 LTS 38.30% 2022 or 2022 R2 5.90% 2019 R3 7.70% EOL Versions (2017-2021, 12.x or older 8.70%
5 30.80% 4 47.30% 3 15.40% 2 3.70% 1 2.80%
EOL Versions (2017-2021, 12.x or older 3.83 2019 R3 3.94 2022 or 2022 R2 3.99 2023 R3 LTS 4.09
Update environment (OS, database) 61.6% Dev productivity (Enhancements to the IDE) 59.0% End user experience (Modern UI, runtime features) 51.1% Bug fixes 42.6% Deployment improvements (PowerServer, PBAutoBuild) 32.1% Strengthened security 31.3%
How would you rate your most recent upgrade experience (with 4 being satisfied and 5 being highly satisfied)?
5 44.10% 4 35.20% 3 15.90% 2 1.50% 1 2.90%
Do you have plans to use PowerServer to Internet-deploy any of your PowerBuilder apps?
2025 Beta 44% 2022 R3 LTS 47% 2022/2022 R2/2021 35% Legacy Versions ( 2020 or earlier) 37% Have not tried 20%
Which feature(s) on the product roadmap for PowerBuilder 2025 interest you the most?
New generation code editor 77.80% Ultra-fast compiler 62.90% Save source code as plain text instead of PBL 55.90% Automation creation of REST APIs 52.70% Revamped source code management 44.60% Display menus in a ribbon view 41.70%
How would you describe the current staffing situation of your team for PowerBuilder development?
Fully staffed and stable 49.30% Slightly understaffed , but manageable 34.20% Understaffed and in need of additional resources 10.10% Significantly understaffed and seeking external support 2.10% Other 4.30%
Chris Pollach (Director of Developer Relations at Appeon) did a 30-minute demo of many of the new features in PowerBuilder 2025. Finally, Marco Meoni (Appeon MVP) then provided a customer success story that utilized the .NET DataStore to implement a mobile app.
Chat Cafe
What was supposed to follow that was four simultaneous Chat Cafe sessions hosted via Zoom:- PowerBuilder Roadmap hosted by Armeen Mazda
- General Topics hosted by Chris Pollach
- PowerBuilder 2025 by myself
- PowerServer hosted by Mike Searer
Due to a technical glitch only the PowerBuilder Roadmap session worked correctly, the rest were rescheduled for the next day. The conversation in the roadmap session was lively, I really prefer doing it in Zoom compared to previous years of just texting in YouTube chat panel. Most people had their video turned off for most of the session, but we could hear each other talk and the chat was still interactive. Towards the end, a number of folks did turn their video feeds on and it was good to see some familiar faces as well.
Technical Sessions
On the first day it was a single track of me doing a 50-minute session on the PowerBuilder 2025 new IDE features and a 90-minute session on the new PowerBuilder 2025 runtime features. Patricia Guzman (EPMAPS Agua de Quito) did a customer success story, and then I concluded the day with a 35-minute session on the new .NET DataStore and changes to PowerClient deployment option in PowerBuilder 2025. The second day had dual tracks: one for PowerScript and the other for PowerServer/Web APIs. I did one 35-minute session on the Open-Source PowerBuilder Foundation Class libraries.
Chat Cafe Redux
I also hosted the PowerBuilder 2025 Chat Cafe on the second day, but only 3 other people (out of the 25 that registered) showed up. It may be because the others didn't see the email with the rescheduled information. It may have been due to the chat being run concurrently with technical sessions and largely overlapping with the PowerServer Chat Cafe. And it may be because a number of people only reserved time in their schedule for the first day of the conference and were unable to attend the rescheduled event. Despite the technical difficulties I would highly recommend doing this again next year. We just need to work out the kinks.
As I write this, replays of all of the keynotes and technical sessions are available at the Elevate Streaming Center. Recording of the Chat Cafe sessions are not. I guess Appeon wants to leave some incentives to participate live.
Conclusion
Aside for some technical glitches, particularly with the Chat Cafe, I thought it went well. Lots of great new features and lots of great information about possible upcoming features. I would hope that we would do the Chat Cafe again next year in the original format (concurrent with each other after keynote, but not concurrent with any technical sessions). Just because we had some glitches doesn't mean it wasn't a great idea.
The only other recommendation I would make, as I did last year, would be to have a Chat Cafe style closing session at the end of the conference to allow folks to share with each other what they thought about the conference and what they learned at the conference. I'll share a link again that I shared last year when I made that recommendation: How to close out a conference with style