Christophe Dufourmantelle

Sofrepost, a subsidiary of La Poste (the French mail), develops and sells SPS, a management system for post offices. Our clients are national postal systems from a dozen countries on several continents. SPS is composed of five packaged applications developed with PowerBuilder that represent around 150 Mo of code, 400 windows and 1200 DW. The initial development of our application took place in 1996 and required approximately 10 man years. The application has since been regularly modified to extend its functionalities. More recently, the requests of our clients have led us to study solutions to modernize this system, with three main objectives: Web migration: The clients wish to lower the deployment costs to their many post offices. They also need to offer access at a distance via a simple web browser, in particular for the use of financial services. Makeover: Presen... (more)

PowerBuilder on the iPad?

As you may have noticed, a number of media sources are writing about the overall progression of iOS device sales and of the iPad in particular. The latter's sales have developed to the point where their presence in businesses is becoming indispensable (see Looking into Enterprise iOS by Ian Thain) This article is intended for PowerBuilder users who are considering developing iPad applications. We will try to determine to what point this device has become a must-have, by looking at recent sales and market penetration figures in the professional world. Then, we will discuss develo... (more)

The Real Cost of Passwords

PBDJ Feature Story In a 2002 NTA Monitor survey, it was found that the typical intensive computer user had, on average, 21 passwords. This includes everything from a PIN number on a bank card to a Windows password to their personal e-mail. Password fatigue is the phenomenon of feeling overwhelmed by the need to remember all of them. To combat this, many users have found coping strategies. For example, they often create a list of passwords in a file, or even put them on post-its stuck to their terminals. All of this undermines the security policies that the passwords were create... (more)

An Application Suite for PowerBuilder Developers

PBDJ Feature Story Novalys, creator of tools for developers since 1998, is an active part of the PowerBuilder community. We create applications to make development faster and easier. Our clients span the globe. This year, we are proud to announce the addition of two new products to our line-up Novalys prides itself on responding to the real needs of PowerBuilder developers. If you find yourself in one of the following situations, we have a solution to help you. In an upcoming series of articles, we will develop each situation further. Application Security The more passwords a us... (more)

PowerBuilderTV Celebrates Two Years of Webinars

With a varied range of subjects from Taking PowerBuilder to the Cloud, to Adding Single Sign-On to PowerBuilder Applications, we have been working to keep the community up-to-date on PowerBuilder tips and tools. As our two year anniversary approaches, we'd like to share with you a little insight into how things are going so far. We've had great contributions from the PowerBuilder community including some prominent community members such as Dave Fish and John Strano, among many others, and so it's no surprise that PBTV has had more than 5 000 registrations in 2011. Over the past... (more)