1. Sivaprakash BKR
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. Tuesday, 11 June 2024 07:00 AM UTC

Hello,

I received an email stating that the Powerscript migrator is to be discontinued in the forthcoming 2025.  Is that so?   I think it's one of the important selling point for PB.  Any alternatives planned or available?

 

Happiness Always
BKR Sivaprakash

 

Arnd Schmidt Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Wednesday, 12 June 2024 14:44 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 1

@Roland,

In PowerBuilder 10.5 is was already possible to show files and subdirectories in the systemtree and also to add them to (and use) the source control by using a webtarget target type.

Food for real deep thought ;-)

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mike S Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Wednesday, 12 June 2024 14:06 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 2

IMO, the migrator's main benefit was to allow PB logic to be used in/as/with a web api.  The drawback was that you then had to maintain it in c#.  If you have a lot of c# developers and few PB developers, that is probably fine.  

We use c# to create minimal apis and handle the security for them, and then call/run PB nvo processes from the C# webapp.  I recall that Chris P. has done something similar for a very long time.  The main issue with this method is scalability, which can be handled by auto-scaling out to multiple machines.  Since PB isn't thread safe you have to run each call in its own process which one of the scalability issues.   This allows us to maintain the logic in PB and really have the best of all worlds.  We do this for relatively long running or heavy processes that are run occasionally.

 

 

 

 

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Roland Smith Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Wednesday, 12 June 2024 12:34 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 3

Will the SCC API be available with the 'no PBL' mode?

I suggest adding some way to source control non-PB files such as image files or PBR files directly from the IDE.

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  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Thursday, 13 June 2024 15:13 PM UTC
@Roland, Obsolete means we have decided not to make further investment in a feature because commercially doesn't make sense. So yes, of course technically it is possible. Just to give you more info, the legacy source control relies on ORCA so to support this we would have to first make ORCA support the new format. That is significant investment to do when the world is moving away from SCC API.
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  1. Roland Smith
  2. Thursday, 13 June 2024 15:22 PM UTC
The SCC API deals with files. For example, SccAdd, SccCheckout and SccCheckin. They have arguments that include an array of full filenames, the count of filenames, and a comment. If I understand the new mode correctly, source code is stored directly in .sr* files instead of inside a PBL. The IDE could pass the file name of the directly saved .sr* file to the SCC function. The ORCA Export/Import step would be eliminated.
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  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Thursday, 13 June 2024 17:31 PM UTC
@Roland, It's possible I misunderstood what the engineers said. But regardless, no point to investigate further the feature is obsolete so no code changes to it.
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Armeen Mazda @Appeon Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Tuesday, 11 June 2024 19:53 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 4

Yes, we are absolutely committed to cloud architecture.  We have already made and continue making significant investments in consuming Web APIs, developing Web APIs with DataWindow technology, and PowerServer cloud deployment.  The discontinuation of PowerScript Migrator should not be misinterpreted that Appeon is not committed to the cloud roadmap focus that we laid out years ago and have been executing against consistently ever since.

Now as far as why we discontinued PowerScript Migrator, it basically boils down to what Miguel and Arturo said.  PowerScript Migrator is a simple syntax translator, and we never marketed it as some magical solution.  Unfortunately, we misjudged the market... most customers either want something that eliminates majority of the conversion effort or they won't use it at all. 

As a general rule, we do not discontinue a feature unless there is something better to replace it, the feature has little to no demand, the feature doesn't align with our roadmap, and/or the feature is security/liability risk.  Sometimes a feature we discontinue might be combination of the reasons I mentioned.  For the case of PowerScript Migrator, it had little demand and was liability in the sense many customers feeling misled due to mismatch in expectations.

 

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  1. Arnd Schmidt
  2. Wednesday, 12 June 2024 10:03 AM UTC
https://www.appeon.com/products/powerscript-migrator

https://www.appeon.com/products/csharp-migration-solution

vs. "PowerScript Migrator is a simple syntax translator".

There is a large gap between the advertisement and the reality.

Maybe that was a reason for little demand.

  1. Helpful 2
  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Wednesday, 12 June 2024 13:51 PM UTC
There is difference between how much of the various types of statements it has rules for converting vs. how much work is really saved, but I understand your point that many customers can misunderstand. For what it's worth, we made significant effort to reach out to customers interested in this feature to provide free training and really lay out the caveats so there is clear understanding what the feature can really do in real-life context. Anyway, we are in agreement that it is a failed feature.
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Miguel Leeuwe Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Tuesday, 11 June 2024 08:20 AM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 5

I've only tried it out once, but I think that the code generated by the migrator wasn't that great.

Thanks!

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  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Wednesday, 12 June 2024 13:43 PM UTC
Andreas is exactly right.
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  1. Sivaprakash BKR
  2. Friday, 14 June 2024 07:15 AM UTC
Add one more point Andreas.

the feature has little to no demand, and it cannot be made as a better product.

May be a better product could create more demand.
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  1. Arturo Rosello
  2. Tuesday, 9 July 2024 22:40 PM UTC
In PowerBuider, important features such as COM, SOAP and now PowerScript Migrator have been left. These functionalities made it possible to generate PowerBuilder APIs from the code that allow the code to be distributed. Since these functionalities are left out, there is no way to generate APIs from the PB code.

One option is for POWERSERVER to implement functionality that allows NVOs to be distributed as EASERVER did or as the TOPWIZ WEB proposal.
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