When you deploy a PowerBuilder application as a Web Forms application to an IIS server, PowerBuilder lists any unsupported features in the Output window. For the most part, unsupported features fail silently in the Web Forms application, but unexpected results can also occur.
If an unsupported feature prevents the PowerBuilder to .NET compiler from compiling your application, the failure and its cause are noted in the Output window in PowerBuilder.
DataWindow support
- Presentation styles — currently all DataWindow presentation styles are supported except RichText and OLE. All DataWindow dialog boxes (Specify Retrieval Arguments, Specify Retrieval Criteria, Import File, Save As, Print, Sort, Filter, and Crosstab) are supported.
- DataWindow expressions — most of the built-in functions for DataWindow expressions are supported, but they do not include the Describe, LookupDisplay, Case, Page, PageAbs, ProfileInt, ProfileString, and StripRTF expression functions or the aggregate expression functions. User-defined expression functions are also not supported in Web Forms applications.
Note: DataWindow expressions that change UI properties are not supported on the client side. To work around this issue, you can trigger the Clicked or RowFocusChanged event to force a postback. DataWindow expressions are fully supported on the server side with the exception of expression functions noted above.
- Controls in DataWindow controls — controls you can add to a DataWindow are not all supported in Web Forms applications. The Oval, RoundRectangle, InkPicture, OLE Object, and OLE Database Blob controls are not supported in a Web Forms DataWindow. For a list of unsupported properties of controls that are supported in Web Forms DataWindow objects, see Controls in DataWindow objects.
- JavaScript keywords — you cannot use JavaScript reserved words to name fields or bands in a DataWindow control that you deploy to the Web. The list of reserved words is available on the Sun Microsystems Web site at http://docs.sun.com/source/816-6410-10/keywords.htm.
- DataWindow pagination — the Web DataWindow control uses a simplified version of DataWindow pagination rules, and provides a choice of page navigation bars instead of scroll bars to support page navigation.
See Take Advantage of Global Configuration Properties and DataWindow objects and controls.
- Printing DataWindow objects — although the PrintDataWindow or PrintScreen print functions are not supported, users can save DataWindow objects and their data as PDF files, and can print the current Web Forms page using a browser’s print menu when those are available. (Browser menus are available only when the default.aspx page name is included in the URL used to start the Web Forms application.)
- DataWindow gradient and tooltip properties — the DataWindow gradient and tooltip properties introduced in PowerBuilder 11.5 are not supported in Web Forms applications.
- RichText column events and functions — the DataWindow RichText column events and functions introduced in PowerBuilder 11.5 are not supported in Web Forms applications.
Mail support
Although you can send e-mail from Web Forms applications, there is no support for receiving e-mail. When you call MailSend, you must supply a MailMessage argument. The MailSend syntax without a parameter is not supported.
The
MailSend function returns an enumerated value of type MailReturnCode. These values of the MailReturnCode enumeration are not supported in Web Forms applications:
- MailReturnAccessDenied
- MailReturnDiskFull
- MailReturnInsufficientMemory
- MailReturnInvalidMessage
- MailReturnMessageInUse
- MailReturnNoMessages
- MailReturnTextTooLarge
- MailReturnTooManyFiles
- MailReturnTooManyRecipients
- MailReturnTooManySessions
PBNI feature
You can use the built-in Web services client extension (pbwsclient125.pbx)
in applications that you plan to deploy to .NET. You cannot use any other PBNI
extensions in .NET Web Forms targets.
Hot keys
Hot keys, shortcut keys, and accelerator keys are not supported in .NET Web Forms targets.
Functions on .NET primitive types
You cannot call functions on .NET primitive types that map to PowerBuilder primitive types. See Datatype Mappings for the list of datatype mappings from .NET to PowerBuilder.