Customer Reviews

Official Advanced Powerbuilder 6: The Definitive Guide

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'd start to say that only buy this book if you are an experienced powerbuilder developer. Why? Because there is some errors that could lead an inexperienced developer to sink. To be more precisely, I will list some errors that scared me:

Page 89: ... the control array for the Tab control is only updated when tab pages are created in the Painters. It's wrong. The control array is update automatically by Powerbuilder when you use the following funtions: 1. OpenTab( ) 2. OpenUserObject( ) 3. OpenTabWithParm() 4. OpenUserObjectWithParm( ) 5. CloseTab( ) 6. CloseUserObject( ) 7. MoveTab( ) It's a new feature of Powerbuilder 6

Page 41: ... Code table can be defined for the following edit styles: * Checkbox * DropdownDatawindow * Etc There is no table code for checkbox.

Page 473: ...Here are valid values: (communication drivers) * Winsock * OpenClientServer * NamedPipes * Local OpenClientServer driver is no more available in Powerbuilder 6

Well, there are others errors. But if you are good enough to detect them...go ahead.... buy the book, it'd worth. But if you are not prone to detect and correct others mistakes, I'd suggest try another book.

Being a novice PB programmer I wanted more from the book than just a mention of all PB elements. It does mention more than the Fundamentals book. I guess I was looking for a book called 'Operational PB' which might have had more real-world examples in it about how to do the ordinary type things any programmer might weant to do in the average PB application. This wasn't it. I'll have to write it myself, sometime. This book was more an advanced accessory to PB help.

Hello. I read this book. It was okay! I have read many powerbuilder books and to this date, I have not found one that really covers what I want. Maybe my expectations are too hight! I guess all of the authors write for what they would like to write about and not for what we want.

However, I registered my book, and I did receive a corrections page. I think the corrections page is also available on the publisher's web site.

I know for a fact that this author, on his web site is looking for suggestions for his next book. So I guess they are listening....

I wanted to say that I really liked this book. I am surprized that someone posted a message saying that the validation rules were wrong. The order of the validation rules are CORRECT. I guess this person needs to learn Power Builder. Since version 5, Powersoft changed the order of the validation rules. I enjoyed reading this book. I also found the database chapters very good too.

My suggestion to Mr. gorgani is to concentrate on one major feature of Power Builder for the next release like pfc or distributed.

This is to the reader from New York, NY:

I think you need to call Powersoft and find out for yourself that the "Validation Rules" are as described in this book. These validation rules were changed since version 5.0 and differ from version 4.0. I made the same mistake as you when I took the datawindow advanced course but to my surprize, I found out that the validtion rules were changes.

Sorry but I had to jump in.

I'd say that this was a good book. We were looking for a good book on Powerbuilder's version control. We could not find anything in the market. I found this book's version control section very helpful.

Tend to disagree with the previous reviewer. Book contains numerous errors even in basic PB functionality. To prove it please open the page describing famous 4 steps of DW validation and please read step 3. What's wrong there? Should it be step 1? How you can trust this book? I got scared reading it. If you are learning PB you might be lead in wrong direction.

I tend to disagree with the last review on this book. My manager bought the book for us and we have found it quite usefull. And to be honest, yes some of the event descriptions etc could be found in the manuals but there was lots more that could not be found anywhare else and in no other books. Overall, this book is a better book than many others that we have read.

Too much material from PB manuals, too much of basic stuff for advanced book.

Book is not that bad, but a lot of the material covered cannot be described as an advanced stuff. More than that, it contains a lot of material taken directly from PB manuals (not the only book suffering from it). Not a book for experienced programmer, but might be very good for the person learning PB though.