Sybase to Oracle conversion

Background: Few years ago, I worked on a project where I had to convert close to 100 stored procedures from Sybase to Oracle. There are several differences between the 2 databases.

I was hired to be the Oracle expert in a team full of Sybase developers. I constantly worked with them to convert the databases and the code to Oracle. I worked on it from start to finish. I was asked to set up the environment, set the standards for Oracle coding and convert a lot of stored procedures. I participated in their migration project and eventually even supported their batch environment that ran in both Sybase and in the new Oracle environment. I even got a chance to work as a Oracle development DBA within the team. This gave me a lot of opportunity to learn about both the databases. I got to know their similarities (they both are SQLbased relational databases, aren't they?) and their differences (Did you know, Sybase database is the same as Oracle Schema and Oracle Database is the same as Sybase Server??).

There are a lot of sites out there discussing the differences and even migration from one to another. I benefited from a lot of those and I made a lot of notes at the time. When I was working on the project, I was so busy I couldn't post all those notes online. Now, that I have some time, I am dusting off my old notes and posting here. I hope it benefits someone doing similar kind of migration.

Sybase to Oracle Database conversion

This is a much bigger topic than I intend to cover in this post. My take on the conversion is mainly from a developer point of view. The DBAs will have a lot more to add about the database setup and architecture. Though, you will see references to database level differences, as I did perform the duties of a development DBA within the team. Below presentation lists out some of the differences while coding a stored procedure in the 2 databases. I took one of the procedures we migrated and annotated it with comments. I made this for the team at the time. I've changed the names of the tables and procedures to be more generic.

Note about the convention in the attached presentation: I wrote a complete Oracle Coding standards manual for the Sybase developers. I am following this convention in the attachment below. In general keywords are upper cased, other identifiers lower cased. The names of identifiers follow certain naming convention. I will post about this separately.

Sybase to oracle_conversion[slideshare id=8735258&w=668&h=714&sc=no]

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PB 101 - Contd... Project Workspace

As mentioned earlier, PB is geared up for developing applications for various platforms. We saw how the IDE is built around the Project Workspace, and the tools it provides to access every in the workspace. First let's define the various parts of a Powerbuilder based software development project.

PB 101 - Contd... Powerbuilder IDE

Powerbuilder IDE

PB IDE, just like any other windows application is an MDI application. It is made up of several windows and menus and toolbars. When you open the IDE, it opens up with no Workspace. You need to create/open a Workspace (using options in File menu) to work on a specific project. A  Workspace wraps around one or more Targets which in turn includes one or more Libraries. The libraries contain the objects. The objects themselves have properties and methods like in any Object oriented environment. The objects also contain events as Powerbuilder is an event driven programming environment.

Navigation through the project hierarchy is available through a tool called System Tree. The IDE also contains a full menu toolbar called Powerbar that lets you perform several tasks including creating various components in the project hierarchy. The IDE is made up of several individual tools and wizards, which are called Painters. There is a painter for each type of object and each task in PB.

System Tree & Powerbar

The System Tree is a project explorer. This let's you see the project hierarchy mentioned above, in a tree like fashion. The TreeView object fits this hierarchical structure perfectly. The topmost parent in the tree is the Project Workspace. You can drill down targets and libraries to object properties and methods here. You can expand or collapse at any level in the tree. You can open any existing objects in the System Tree (by double-clicking on them).

Powerbar is the Powerbuilder menu Toolbar containing buttons for important menu items.  You can create new objects by Clicking on the "New" button in Powerbar (or File->New option in the menu).

Clicking on New opens up a pop-up window that has several options (buttons) to open various wizards and tools in PB. You can create workspace, target, PB objects including windows, menus, datawindows from here. You can also open up several tools and wizards, such as Library explorer, Database wizard, File Editor, PB Profiler etc, by creating "New" instances of these. Every such wizard or tool in PB is called a Painter.

[caption id="attachment_139" align="aligncenter" width="1024" caption="Powerbuilder System Tree and Powerbar"][/caption]

Fig 1 - Powerbuilder System Tree & Powerbar

PB New Options - Here showing several types of PB Objects

Fig 2- New Option in Powerbar leads to "New" options Pop-up

Painters

As mentioned above Powerbuilder IDE is essentially made of several Painters. Each specific component type has it's own Painter (Object Editor) and several tasks have associated Painters (Tools or Wizards). So you will see Window Painter, Datawindow Painter, Database Painter, Library Painter etc. Each Painter is self-contained unit and has it's own menu (and toolbar), a control(s) list and properties sheet. As you can see, Powerbuilder IDE itself is designed in an object oriented way.

You open the individual component painters when you open an object in System Tree View or when Click on New on he menu bar.  Several task and tool painters can be opened in Powerbar.

Here are some of the Painters are available in PB:

• Application Painter


• Window Painter


• Menu Painter


• DataWindow Painter


• Function Painter


• User Object Painter


• Database Painter


• Library Painter


• Project Painter (this is used to build applications - sort of compiler/linker options window; more about this later).

PB IDE - Other parts

Apart from these, the IDE UI has the following components:

An Output (child) Window which shows all the messages from the PB IDE environment, such as compiler outout, error messages etc.

A To-Do List Popup - Here you can enter a "todo" list. You can enter your own laundry list of things to be done in a project. Some of the wizards in PB also create To-Do entries automatically.

PB IDE includes a Browser window, which lists out all the objects in the project. This tool is very useful in locating objects in a large project with lot of libraries. As of version 10.5, it does not have a search capability yet, but you can navigate through libraries and types of objects to easily locate an object. Once found, you can "Edit" the object.

There are also several tools and wizards available in PB. Application Profiler, Debug Window, Database Painter, EA Server Profile etc. Each of these have special Toolbars attached to them.

See below link for more information (The link is for PB 11.0, but still applicable to any version > 8.x in general).

http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.dc37772_1100/html/pbgs/CBBCHDJG.htm

PB 101 - Starting from scratch

the last few posts, we talked about PB a lot. My last post on Hello World gave an introduction to PB as a programming language. Now, it's about time we introduce Powerbuilder, the programming environment itself and how to use it to successfully develop a simple application.

PB as a n-tier tool

PB started as a simple client/server tool. We and PB are now in n-tier world. This means an application could be divided into multi-tiers,  such as a client and one or more application servers connecting to the database in the backend. Even the client can be multiple, as in you may have a PB application client in the office, a web page accessing the same servers etc. Dividing the application logic into logical blocks of client and server(s) is called application partitioning. Java J2EE is a great multi-tier development environment in 3GL. PB has grown into a n-tier tool in the 4GL world.  Sybase has come up with an Application Server called EA Server (originally called Jaguar in version 7). You can now use it to build not only windows applications, but middle tier applications (Application Servers) and Web Applications as well. To handle this new world, PB has completely changed it's own GUI as of version 7.

PB IDE

When you open PB (versions > 8.x), the first thing you will see is the workspace. A workspace comprises of several "Targets" each target representing a piece (partition) of the application that can be independently deployed. A target can be for different type of applications - a windows client application, a Jaguar component, a DLL, a JSP program, a .Net program etc.

To the target, you add the PB libraries, by adding it to the library list. A library list is not only for housekeeping of libraries in a target, but at run-time this serves as the search path for the application to find objects.

And to the libraries, you add objects such as Applications, windows, datawindows etc. When you create a windows client application, an application object will be automatically added to the library just created. Below images show the various parts of a workspace. We will start looking into each of these in detail in the coming posts.

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