PowerBuilder built a generation of client/server business applications, and plenty of them still run companies today. We read the application, DataWindows and all, into a model and generate a modern web application from it, 90%+ automated, then prove the result behaves like the original.
This is for teams whose PowerBuilder application works, but has become something they maintain around instead of improve.
PowerBuilder is not abandoned software. The pressure comes from somewhere else.
Appeon has kept PowerBuilder moving since taking it over from SAP in 2016, so this is not a countdown to an end-of-support date. The constraint is people. PowerScript and DataWindow experience sits with developers who are near retirement, and nobody is learning it on the way in.
The DataWindow is why PowerBuilder applications were built so fast, and it is why they are hard to leave. Retrieval, validation, computed fields and update logic are bound together inside it. A hand rewrite has to find all of that and work it out again, screen by screen.
A Windows client talking straight to the database was the right architecture in 1998. It makes remote access, mobile use, API integration and modern security review harder than they need to be, and every one of those is now a standing requirement.
Keeping a large PowerBuilder application on a current release, a current compiler and a supported database driver is recurring work with no visible benefit to the business. That budget buys nothing except the right to stand still.
A hand rewrite works your business rules out again from documentation and memory, which is where undocumented behavior gets lost. We carry them across from the real source instead.
Code Analyzer reads every line of the PowerBuilder source: every window, DataWindow, user object and PowerScript function, along with the data access and the business rules buried inside them. From that we build a model of how the application actually behaves. Gaps are surfaced, not guessed.
Code Transformer maps the model onto a modern architecture and generates a modern web application, 90%+ automated. Generating from the model gives you an application built the way someone would build it today, instead of old workarounds in a new language. Our engineers handle the custom pieces no automated conversion can reach, with AI assistance, and check the result against your original system.
Side-by-side testing runs the new system and the old one on the same inputs and compares what comes out. The business rules held in the model give a second, separate check that does not rely on the tests alone. Automated test coverage is built alongside the transformation.
A manufacturing company had run its PowerBuilder system for more than 20 years. Documentation was incomplete and the engineers who knew it best were retiring, so maintaining it was getting riskier every year.
Automated analysis recovered accurate documentation from the source code, and the application was transformed into a standard web application. The migration took half the usual time, and ongoing maintenance costs dropped 40%.
TypeScript and React by default, or Vue and similar frameworks where your standards call for it. Readable by any web developer you hire.
There is no Vivify runtime under your application and no license you must keep paying to run your own software.
You can host it, maintain it, and extend it yourselves, with no dependency on us to keep it running.
A web application that works across desktop, tablet, and mobile instead of a Windows-only install.
A track record across major enterprises
Yes. Appeon acquired PowerBuilder from SAP in 2016 and continues to release new versions. Support is not the reason to move. The reasons are hiring, the client/server architecture, and the cost of keeping a large application current.
They are read, not redrawn. Code Analyzer reads the DataWindow definitions along with the rest of the source: the retrieval, the computed fields, the validation and the update logic. That behavior goes into the model and is generated into the new application, instead of being worked out again by hand.
In our projects, conversions from stacks like PowerBuilder, VB6, and Nexaweb run at 90%+ automation. The remainder, the custom pieces no automated conversion can handle, is done by our engineers with AI assistance and checked against the original system.
Not necessarily. The application can keep talking to the same database. We also convert database code in its own right, including Oracle PL/SQL to PostgreSQL, if a platform move is part of the plan.
Business rules move across through a model built from your real code, rather than being re-typed by hand. We then check the result two ways: side-by-side testing on the same inputs, and the business rules held in the model as a separate check.
Usually with the free assessment: a complete dependency map, risk scoring, an effort model and a costed migration plan, produced from your own source code. If you would rather see output first, we can run a paid proof of concept on a representative slice of your application.
The assessment is free and built from your own source code. If you would rather see output first, we can run a paid proof of concept on a representative slice of the application.