Roadmap Focus Areas
Appeon is committed to releasing, in agile 6-12 month cycles, new product features to meet the evolving needs of our customers. These needs span maintaining existing client/server systems for the long haul to rapidly moving to the Cloud. In terms of roadmap, this gets translated into four key focus areas: sustaining core features, modernizing application UI, improving developer productivity, and incorporating more Cloud technology.
Priorities by Version
For each major version, Appeon prioritizes where it will invest the most engineering resources and what attributes of the product will receive the biggest changes. The priorities of a major version also apply to its subsequent revisions. While the priorities strongly shape the product, Appeon typically adds other new features and enhancements beyond the specified priorities.
PowerBuilder 2022
Runtime Performance - boost runtime performance of all project types, 32-bit client/server, 64-bit client/server, and PowerServer, through new features and internal optimizations.
Dev Productivity - Debug 64-bit client/server apps and PowerServer apps. Improve search capabilities. Optimize editor screen layouts.
Compatibility - Stay compatible with the latest third-party software, such as Windows OS, Databases, Web browsers, and .NET framework.
All New Features >Next Major Version
Productivity - Develop faster with a revamped IDE that offers a modern code editing experience. Some new features include code completion, code assistance, code navigation, and code refactoring.
Compatibility - Stay compatible with the latest third-party software, such as Windows OS, Databases, Web browsers, and .NET framework.
2022 Features List
Appeon typically introduces major new features in major versions of our products. We then revise a major version, based on customer feedback, a few times to enhance its key features, introduce new minor features, and arrive at a long-term support version.
The upcoming features we are disclosing is our minimum plan that is subject to change without notice. We are not able to publish a complete or detailed feature list, especially for revisions, since customer feedback has significant impact on our product plans. So use this information to gain a sense of what may possibly come in the near future, and you can see our progress in agile 6-12 month cycles.
PowerBuilder/PowerServer Roadmap
Focus Area: UI • Enhance UI Theme feature
Further enhance the UI Theme feature based on customer feedback.
• Resolve UI compatibility issues that are high priority
Ensure that the UI of PowerBuilder applications stays compatible with technological changes.
• Tabbed document interface
Provide configurable option to render MDI sheets in a tabbed view or classic view.
• Enhance Graph DataWindow
Support high resolution displays and render new modern look for existing graph types of the DataWindow.
Focus Area: Core • Support the latest Windows OS/database versions
Support the latest Windows OS/database versions.
• Call .NET 5 or .NET 6 assemblies
Support natively calling .NET 5 or .NET 6 assemblies from PowerScript.
• Resolve any security issues that are discovered
Resolve any security vulnerability issues that are discovered with the highest priority.
• Enhance NativePDF printing
Further enhance the NativePDF printing feature based on customer feedback.
• 64-bit runtime optimization
Enhance the performance and memory handling for 64-bit applications to take advantage of 64-bit architecture.
• Native email client
Enable direct connection to mail server for email services.
• FTPClient object
Support directly sending and receiving files over FTP/FTPS/SFTP from the client.
• DropDownDataWindow/DropDownListBox filter
Automatially filter the DropDownDataWindow and DropDownListBox items based on the text entered in the field.
• Save Datawindow as excel
Convert a DataWindow or DataStore to a Microsoft excel file that will preserve the existing formatting in the DataWindow.
• QR code generation
Incorporate a QR code generation library for natively creating QR code in applications.
Focus Area: Dev Productivity • Tabbed interface
Enable the IDE to display multiple opened editors in tabs rather than MDI.
• Enhance search capability
Make it more productive to search for objects and code in the IDE; for example, searching by regular expressions and jumping to code references.
• 64-bit debugging
Enable the IDE to use the 64-bit PowerBuilder Runtime so that the debugger can be used with 64-bit applications.
• Installable cloud app debugging
Provide support for debugging PowerClient/PowerServer projects.
• Enhance Git/SVN
Eliminate the need to upload binary PBLs to Git/SVN, thus fixing unnecessary conflicts, error in branching or updating that may occur when PBLs are version controlled.
• IDE compilation environment upgrade
Compile the IDE using Visual Studio 2019 and resolve incompatibility issues.
Focus Area: Cloud • Support .NET 6
Support PowerServer running on .NET 6.
• HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3
Support the latest HTTP and security protocols HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3.
• Enhance REST API security
Connect to a RESTful Web API using a certificate file.
SnapDevelop Roadmap
Focus Area: Cloud • Kubernetes deployment
Containerize and deploy apps to a Kubernetes cluster.
• Develop Node.js apps
Support developing with NodeJS to build server applications in JavaScript.
• Support microservices
Support building scalable microservices that use gRPC for communication; support debugging and testing microservices.
Focus Area: UI • Develop HTML apps
Support various HTML UI technologies, including HTML & CSS, JavaScript, and TypeScript.
• Support leading HTML UI frameworks
Support leading HTML UI frameworks, including React, Angular, and Vue.
• Support Razor Pages
Support the development, compilation and deployment of Razor Pages in ASP.NET Core.
Focus Area: Core • Support .NET 6
Support .NET 6 for development, debugging, and deployment.
Focus Area: Dev Productivity • Cross-OS debugging and remote debugging
Debug apps running on Windows, Linux, and MacOS; or remotely debug apps running in a Docker container.
• MongoDB support in DB Server Explorer
Provide an easy way to explore and manipulate data in MongoDB.
.NET Datastore Roadmap
Focus Area: Cloud • Cloud Relational Database Service
Enables direct connection with Cloud Relational Database Service.
Focus Area: Core • Enhance data import/export
Refactor the import/export functions for achieving better performance.
• Enhance JSON handling
Provide a JSON library directly in SnapObjects for better handling of JSON.
Focus Area: UI • DataWindow UI attributes
Support exporting DataWindow UI attributes to .NET DataStore.