can you use webMethods to interface with a powerbuilder 11.5 server?

Question

I am looking at a powerbuilder 11.5 application modernization. I think I would want to Web Service enable the powerbuilder server and rebuild the client in HTML verusus re-write the entire stack (its over 1.8M lines of code). Does anyone know if WebMethods or a similar ESB can interface and abstract a powerbuilder server?

Answer 1

I did some research on modernizing Powerbuilder and discovered with this particular version (and I suspect others) it is not trivial.

PowerBuilder modernization is difficult because:

1. it is based on a client/server architecture, so the UI is compiled and deployed to a users machine
2. all of the business logic is locked up in a language that is not portable to other platforms: PowerScript
3. PowerScript runs in its own proprietary virtual machine: PBVM.

Sybase provides strategies and methods to move to a distributed, web-based J2EE platform (their EAServer), or .NET. Both approaches come with lots of caveats, considerations, pros, and cons. A good example is that in PowerBuilder, developers can put code in visual object (like attached to an onEvent of a button), but when moving to an n-tiered environment this logic needs to reside on the server in a non-visual object (NVO). This would allow relatively simple event interaction that could be captured and modernized even though it will really require a good deep look at all of the interfaces and some code insertion which needs to be carefully monitored.

A paper that explores some of the steps and considerations for moving to their EAServer: http://www.sybase.com/sb_content/1020364/PBtoEAS_7steps_v2.pdf