While PowerBuilder is not included with EAServer, the products are fully integrated and work well together. PowerBuilder allows you to generate NVOs that act as proxies for EAServer components. Using a proxy, you can call component methods as if they were implemented as local NVO methods. You can call any type of component from a PowerBuilder client, not just PowerBuilder NVO components.
To create a PowerBuilder client, use the PowerBuilder IDE wizards to generate proxies for the EAServer components that the client calls. Use the PowerScript Connection or JaguarORB object to connect to the server and instantiate proxies for the components. You can invoke the proxy methods to call the component’s business methods.
To create clients that call EJB components, you can use the same proxy wizard that you use for any other component. You can also use the EJB Client Proxy wizard to create EJB proxies. The proxies generated by this wizard use the EJB client PowerBuilder extension. This extension is a wrapper for Java, and therefore provides more flexibility in communicating with EJBs. For example, an EJB client can manipulate a Java class returned from an EJB method call through its proxy. The PowerBuilder Connection object has a smaller footprint (and thus is easier to deploy) because it does not require a JRE to be installed on the computer where the client resides. Connectivity to the server is also faster with the connection object, because there is no delay while a JRE loads.
For more information, see the Application Techniques manual in the PowerBuilder documentation.
