Konstantin Goldobin

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. In PowerBuilder we have a great tool for searching and displaying information - the DataWindow. But how can we do text formatting inside a DataWindow column? Unfortunately, there's no way in the DataWindow object to do that. This article describes a technique that will let you simulate this. A Sample DataWindow To explain, let's say that we have a tabular DataWindow with a one-string column called text. We'll only discuss selecting matching text patterns, not filtering data, so our sample DataWindow can have an external data source. The result set description for this DataWindow is very simp... (more)

Exploring DataWindow Display Formats

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 numeric values or '@' for string values. However, the DataWindow display format is a very powerful tool and you can get more than simple data formatting. This article explores what you can do with DataWindow display formats demonstrating a few tricks. Using Regular Characters A DataWindow display format ca... (more)

Getting Rid of Global Variables

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 won't discuss whether it's good or bad to use global variables as enough has been said on this subject. However, I am going to discuss why global variables are usually used in PowerBuilder applications and how we can live without them. When Global Variables Are Used Let's face it, if you use global variabl... (more)

The Mystery of the dbName DataWindow Column Property

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 Internet does not yield any results either, the only remaining option is to try to find the answer on your own. In this article I describe a problem I had with the dbName DataWindow column property and what I found out about it. How It All Started I was maintaining a project that had had no activity for quite a f... (more)

Drop-Down Lists for Decimal Fields

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 looks like we've overlooked one of the cases when use of a drop-down list can make data entry easier for the user. Most of the time we use drop-down lists when working with lists of pairs "encoded value"/"decoded value": the users see and select decoded values and encoded values are saved in the database. T... (more)