Keith Miller

The best software development project can come to a dead end if you can't build an executable that your end users can run. Luckily, PowerBuilder provides several different ways to generate an executable with a variety of options. Most of these employ the use of the project painter and differ only by how we deploy the project (i.e., development IDE or command line). However, if you want to build your executable with relative pathing like Workspace has or passing-in parameters that change, then Orca-Script is the way to go. If you combine it with a command or batch file, you can automate your build and deploy steps into an unattended and/or scheduled process. Using the OrcaScript language, you can automate both the building of the application into the exe and pbd/dlls as well as the deployment of the needed files to a single directory where they can be tested before be... (more)

OrcaScript Tips, Tricks, Quicks and Snips

In my first OrcaScript article "Using OrcaScript to Automate Your Build Process With or Without Source Control" (PBDJ, Vol. 14, issue 6), I focused on automating the build process using OrcaScript. The entire article was based on the assumption that we might be using a separate build machine. Because of this, I avoided using or connecting to the workspace to get the source control connection parameters or to look at the source control status of each object. This time, I'll make things a little bit easier by using the workspace and focusing on writing short scripts and a reusable ... (more)