New Controls for your PowerBuilder Datawindow

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It seems that over the years, I usually declare the next release of Ultimate Suite for PowerBuilder as the most exciting. For me, this is usually true; it's exciting to be able to provide PowerBuilder developers not only with new UI Controls to help update the look of their applications, but to provide controls that help extend functionality (allowing you to add new features to your applications).

The Ultimate Suite 2021 release has a new set of controls for your windows and user objects. In addition to this, some of these new controls have been brought into the datawindow.

Most of our PowerBuilder applications are heavily data driven and rely on the datawindow to display and persist data. Having new UI controls available right in the datawindow will make it easier for you to use them in your applications; Easier to display, print, or export to PDF.

Here is a rundown of the new datawindow UI controls:

Circle Progress

This control is used to visually display a percentage or progress value. You can change the color to one of many built in colors. The thickness of the circle is also configurable.

Profile Pictures

Profile pictures are becoming very common in many of the applications we use today. Currently, you can add images to a datawindow; So what's so special about this control? With this profile picture control you can select from three different frames (Square, Rounded Square, and Circle). You can also change the frame color and thickness. Images can be sourced from binary columns in the database, or from physical files on the file system.

Rating Stars

Rating stars can be used for a variety of different data. Ultimately, you use it to visual represent a value from 0 to any upper value (e.g. 0 to 5 stars. You can display 20 stars if you want). Think of it as a progress bar but in star form. 

Toggle Button

As it is with profile pictures, toggle buttons are very popular in modern software. It's an elegant way to represent any On/Off state. It's something we are all use to seeing and will immediately know what it does.

Putting it all together


If we put everything together, we see a datawindow built for modern times. Going forward, any new control added to Ultimate Suite will be evaluated for use in the datawindow. If it's practical and serves a purpose in the datawindow, it will be added.

The next release of Ultimate Suite is due this December or January. I encourage you to try out the new datawindow controls when released. I sincerely look forward to your feedback or ideas of other controls that can be added.



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