WaveMaker Emerges As PowerBuilder Alternative

Rich Bianco over at the Displaced Guy blog just wrote a post entitled WaveMaker delivers for the cloud like PowerBuilder did for client-server. In it, he talks about using WaveMaker to migrate PowerBuilder applications to Java.

He makes a number of great point in his post. Here are the key take-aways

1. PowerBuilder is a powerful product but developers need a rich internet alternative.

"I’ve spent most of my career doing PowerBuilder development against every major DBMS and I still believe it offers productivity beyond anything on the market for client-server applications. But the writing is on the wall for client-server and rich internet applications and WaveMaker are the future."

2. WaveMaker is particularly easy to learn for PowerBuilder developers because it uses the same visual development and data window-like concepts

"WaveMaker is the first development tool since PowerBuilder to catch my attention and keep it. WaveMakers’ claim of building a functional enterprise web application without needing to write Java code is for real. In a single day, I’ve taken an existing PHP / MySQL web 1.0 application and re-created a good portion of the core functionality using WaveMaker."

3. WaveMaker is just plain fun, particularly for PowerBuilder develop

"From the day I downloaded WaveMaker and gave it a test run I knew that it was the next step for me as a former PowerBuilder developer. Not and not only am I still having a blast but I feel as confident as ever to tackle the challenge of developing enterprise web applications, or robust SaaS solutions."

It has taken WaveMaker almost 3 years to build a worthy replacement for PowerBuilder. We certainly have not achieved the full breadth of functionality that developers can get from mature client/server tools like PowerBuilder, MS Access and Oracle Forms. However, for developers who want a fast and easy way to build Web 2.0 applications, WaveMaker rocks!