PowerBuilder’s prowess to be able to create Portable Document Format (PDF), has been supported for a long time in the product’s history.  PDF documents have become the gold standard for delivering information, especially in the form of reports. PowerBuilder’s PDF generation capabilities are as follows (in historical order of their introduction):

External DLL – third party solutions that can be called via PB external method declarations in the early days of PB.XLSFO (Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects) - a Java-based solution included with the PB run-time and supported by the DataWindow, which was introduced in PB 7.PostScript Printer – third party printer solutions that do not require a PB interface but only require a PB app to print to an MS-Windows installed printer.GhostScript – an open source solution that PB can utilize via a specially installed printer definition named “Sybase DataWindow PS”, which was introduced in PB 9.NativePDF – a built-in PDF solution (i.e. doesn’t require separate licensing or installation of third-party solutions), which was introduced in PB 2017.

All the above PDF generation mechanisms are still in place today (for backwards compatibility) in PB 2017. However, it is important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of these PDF generation mechanisms and use the appropriate one for your project, especially considering the enhancements made to the NativePDF option in the upcoming PB 2017 R3 release. In this blog, we’ll attempt to get a better perspective on these PDF options.

A variety of external PDF solutions exists for PowerBuilder and are commonly used in many existing projects. However, they often come with a significant extra price tag. They also come with the requirement to define external functions and maintain PowerScript code to support the external connectivity. Since these are developed and maintained by third party vendors, if you chose an unreliable vendor or the vendor ceases to continue the product then to move to a new vendor’s product usually will require a significant re-programming effort.  On the plus side, if you choose a good third-party product, it produces a high-quality rendering and supports advanced PDF features.