[Tfug] Advice on Powerbuilder app migration

[Randy Mathews]

Hello, all. John Gruenenfelder, a longtime friend and TFUG member, 
suggested I ask folks here this question.

I work in a relatively small (~40 FTE) department at the UA that 
oversees construction projects on campus. We handle project oversight, 
budgeting, inspections, design, etc. We are using an in-house built 
Powerbuilder application with a SQL backend to handle pretty much all 
business functions including project budgets, billing, contract 
management, and timesheets. The application dates to around 2000. I've 
been working on it since 2003. My supervisor and I have recently begun 
thinking about how we would like to modernize this application, & what 
development environment we want to migrate to since Powerbuilder is dead 
or dying. This is where we are seeking input.

Both of us are competent Powerscript coders and we know SQL pretty well, 
but we do not have knowledge of contemporary business application 
development environments. Our current fat-client system has worked very 
well for us so far, but having it be a web application certainly has 
some advantages. We have a couple of users outside of our department 
that need special configurations & builds of our app to be able to run 
it, plus our folks might want to access our data from home.

Our current application has been worked on by at least 4 people over the 
years and there is code pretty much _everywhere_, from non-visual 
objects to stuff crammed on GUI elements. There actually is not a lot of 
  logic contained solely on the database so we are going to have to 
completely re-code all our business functions again. We have tons of 
custom reports & whatnot contained on datawindows that we are not 
looking forward to porting/recreating.

Does anyone have advice on what we should be moving toward in 
modernizing this application? What should we focus our training energies 
on? What have others moved to after leaving Powerbuilder?

Thanks in advance!


-- 
-Randy Mathews
Support Systems Analyst, Sr.
Facilities Design & Construction