Konstantin Goldobin

PowerBuilder has a very handy way to make data entry more convenient: the DropDownDataWindow and DropDownListBox edit styles for DataWindow columns. Indeed, it's much simpler to pick up a value from a look-up list than to type it in each time you need to enter it. However, it loo... (more)

PowerBuilder has very good online help and documentation that extensively covers most aspects of programming with PowerBuilder. However, from time to time you'll come across a problem that you can't find an answer to in the online help or documentation. If a search on the Interne... (more)

PowerBuilder Developer's Journal A picture is worth a thousand words. We all have heard this saying a countless number of times. But what if you don't understand what is drawn in the picture? I was approached once with a request to review requirements specifications for some mod... (more)

When I was just starting my career in programming, I thought I would be creating new applications. And I did - I created a few applications from scratch. Maybe two or three of them. But for the most part what I've been doing is working with code written by someone else a while ag... (more)

It may seem as if PowerBuilder programmers are bound to use global variables. Even the PFC, which is said to be the most successfully designed object-oriented framework, requires the use of global variables. Is it something in the nature of PowerBuilder that makes us use them? I ... (more)

DataWindow display formats aren't a big secret. Most PowerBuilder developers use them to format numeric, date, time, and string values properly. Such display formats are usually straightforward and contain characters that have special meaning for a specific datatype like '#' for ... (more)

Let's suppose that you have a search window where a user can enter a search string and get the list of text items matching this pattern. Ideally, the portions of text that meet the search criteria should be highlighted, for example, by text formatting. It could look like Figure 1... (more)