Customer Reviews

PowerBuilder 6.0 Questions & Answers

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a perfect desktop reference for novice and experienced PowerBuilder programmers alike. Many times I've spent hours trying to do something or understand something in Powerbuilder. Because PowerBuilder is such a big complex tool, sometimes it's very difficult or impossible to find a solution in PB's online help and documentation. Many times I can only vaguely remember what magazine or user group provided a clever solution to a head scratching problem. So, I was glad to get my hands on Mr. Hatton's book which is filled with nuggets of information that will save PB programmers a lot of time. I've been a full time PB programmer for 3 years and I keep this book right next to my computer.

This book is a great help to anyone starting out in PowerBuilder. This book covers a lot of PowerBuilder fundamentals as well as basic programming techniques. It is a really useful guide to working in PowerBuilder if you are still new to it, and it is much easier to find answers here than in the powersoft newsgroups. The style is quite readable and a lot more human than a lot of other tech-oriented books. Definitely worth checking out- although probably not useful if you are already a guru.

As a programmer who started with PB5, had to do a project in PB4, and is currently developing in PB6, I found this book to be a great referential starting point. Without having to pore through the massive, sometimes silly, Sybase support pages, and every PB developer's website (usually having the same 2 or 3 tips as all the rest, and never updated) this is a great way to have a lot of commonly asked questions answered immediately. Ranging from strange bugs (i.e. the amazing shrinking detail band) in PB, to PowerBuilder-specific constructs, to clean coding advice in general, this book answers a lot of questions that you need to know, but might be a little embarrassed to ask. Plus, you never get flamed for asking a beginners' question! While it isn't a PowerBuilder be-all end-all, it is a friendly and insightful starting point for someone who would like to break free from using only MS dev tools. A good read, too.

I wish there was a rating for 0 stars. This book rates that. The questions and the answers are extremely superficial. Over 80% of the book is an almost word for word copy of questions and answers that can be found in numerous online forums and maling lists. I don't mind having all of the time and effort I've put into providing answers to questions used to solve their problems. (Many of these answers appear in this book.) But, I strongly object to someone taking my work and effort and trying to make a profit from it, especially when it is offered for free elsewhere.