Criticism
Extensibility of the language was rather limited for older versions of PowerBuilder. The technologies provided to overcome this (ex. PowerBuilder Native Interface, or PBNI) are still rather tricky. To develop a solution that includes external C++ code may not only require a competent C++ developer, but also a PowerBuilder expert to guide the developer through the myriad of subtleties of the language and the PowerBuilder Virtual Machine.
For PowerBuilder 12, released in late 2010, Sybase states that this extensibility is less of an issue, because PowerBuilder .NET's APIs allow the use of "off the street XAML" including control templates and skins as well as its ability to use custom WPF controls with less effort than its historic use of External Function calls and “PBNI” to access external resources.
Sybase has released regular updates to PowerBuilder at intervals of every 1.5 years or so. Moreover, in each of these releases, Sybase regularly incorporates modern development paradigms into the IDE, and provides the ability to develop for .NET. PowerBuilder 12.5 introduces even more .NET and WPF support .
The (classic) Powerscript language itself, which is still available for compatibility reasons, is known as "a language built around the DataWindow" amongst developers with PowerBuilder being the "IDE built around the DataWindow". Since PowerBuilder 12.0, the (now .NET-compliant) PowerScript language is fully compliant with the common language specification (CLS), and can be compared with C#, Java or VB.NET. The language now supports Arrays, Delegates, Parameterized Constructors, User-defined Enumerations and Generics. . PowerBuilder 12.5 introduces support for Multithreading, the ability to consume RESTful (Representational State Transfer) Web Services and Batch Command Processing. For the "classic" PowerScript, various smaller enhancements were added,too. .
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