Bob Hendry

JBuilder Data Express controls enable JBuilder developers to use prebuilt objects to provide the user with an interface in which to view and manipulate data. For the most part, the use of Data Express components simplifies our task of programming data access functionality into our applets/applications. One drawback of using these components is that you're restricted to using only functions and changing properties that are supported by that specific control. In other words, although JBuilder simplifies your task, you can use only prewritten functionality. What if you wanted total control over your data? What if you wanted to control every aspect of how your data is formatted, displayed, edited, and up- dated? The answer to this is knowing how to use the native Java JTable. Mastering the use of this class is your key to exercising total control over data within your ... (more)

TechWave 2002

Welcome to TechWave! I can't believe it's that time of year again. To be honest, I always struggle for a topic for the TechWave issue. I was going to write about "Where Do We Go from Here" or "PowerBuilder and the Future," but both topics are overwritten and seem a bit predictable. I decided that for this issue I would share my PowerBuilder experiences from the past year - the demand and how shops are using it. If you've been reading my editorials you'll know that PowerBuilder is only one of the many tools that I use. I think this gives me an unbiased view of PowerBuilder in gene... (more)

Visual Basic Is Evil

Over the past six months I have been working with programmers with Visual Basic backgrounds. Usually this is a recipe for disaster - like getting dog people and cat people in the same room. With the .NET languages in full swing, and PowerBuilder transformed into a language we would not have recognized only three years ago, this whole thing about PowerBuilder versus Visual Basic has become outmoded and irrelevant. Now I would like to take one parting shot at the worst client/server language ever invented - Visual Basic. Over my cube wall I can sometimes hear debates about using "... (more)

It's That Time Again

Every five years or so a technology emerges that makes us reevaluate the way we write business applications. Guess what? It's that time again - time for our skillsets to be updated. Five years ago, the big wave was distributed programming. The current big wave, really an offshoot of distributed programming, is Web services. If you don't know about Web services, you will very soon. The Web services label is incredibly generic; like any promising and loosely defined technology trend, the concepts it describes will be subject to a great deal of speculation, bandwagoneering, and inc... (more)

Programming in a Wireless World

Have you written any wireless applications yet? If you haven't, you soon will be. If you read the estimates from the professional research firms and forecasters, you'll see they tend to agree that wireless advertising, and ultimately mobile commerce (m-commerce), will become huge industries in the next four to five years. The projections from The Kelsey Group, Ovum, and Durlacher of London estimate that wireless advertising revenues will reach between $16 billion and $23 billion by the year 2005. That's up from estimates of $210 million for the industry in 2000. The same study m... (more)