John Olson

Last year, after migrating a client's application from PFC 5.0.02 to 6.5, then applying some enhancements to take advantage of new features, the program began giving the following PFC error message: "For certain functionality the PFC DataStore requires a reference to its parent window. One of these cases has been encountered. To let the DataStore know who its parent window is, call the of_SetParentWindow() function after the DataStore creation." At first I was disturbed that the PFC developers had coupled the DataStore to a parent object. And worse, not only a parent object, but a window object. This would mean that every DataStore had to be associated with a window. I assumed I'd be forced to use my frame window as a parent for all the "free range" DataStores in my ap... (more)

The Evolution Continues?

Another TechWave issue? You bet! In addition to our content changing to flow with the currents of technology, our schedule is also changing. We've been moving up the schedule each month with the goal of getting on the magazine racks by the first of the month rather than the middle, which has been the case for quite some time. The July issue was going to be the TechWave issue because we h... (more)

TechWave 2000

This year's TechWave was a marked improvement over the last few years. Overall I'd have to say that 1994 and 1995 were the best Sybase Tools conferences ever. Since then their value to me has declined, though they were still worth the time and money. The two areas in which I've been disappointed in past years were the technical sessions and Sybase's inability to communicate their vision.... (more)

Presidential Aides

In the spirit of the current times, I'll use the U.S. presidency as a metaphor for my point today. Software development managers are like presidents and developers are like presidential aides. The job of the president is a difficult one. He's supposed to know everything about everything and be able to make life-and-death decisions based on all facts, with full confidence, and without bli... (more)

PowerBuilder 8-Poised to Conquer

It's been a long time since we've had a new version of PowerBuilder. I don't know about you, but I've been very patient and can't wait any longer. I'm particularly excited about PowerBuilder 8 because many of its new features address the type of development I'm doing - building Web applications consisting of JSPs calling PowerBuilder components running on EAServer. PB7 had several wizards... (more)