PowerBuilder-Centric

PDF Version

While DataWindow .NET 2.5 is tested, certified and supported with Visual Studio 2005, it may be used with Visual Studio 2008.

This document will introduce you to the idiosyncrasies associated with installing and working with DataWindow .NET 2.5 in Visual Studio 2008.

As a baseline, let’s first recap what you experience installing DataWindow .NET 2.5 with Visual Studio 2005…

DataWindow .NET 2.5 with Visual Studio 2005

When the autorun on the installation CD or in the installation disk image is invoked, you see the main installation menu. For the purposes of this walk through, SQL Anywhere 10.0 is assumed to be previously installed.

While the DataWindow .NET module (versus the DataWindow Designer and DataWindow Reference modules) installs, it registers the necessary components with Visual Studio.

Because this walk through has Visual Studio 2005 installed on Vista, VS2005’s Service Pack 1 needed to be installed. For that reason the prompt admonishing you to run Visual Studio with Administrator permissions appears when DataWindow .NET’s installation module invokes (unseen) an instance of Visual Studio for component registration purposes.

 The DataWindow .NET installation module then reports success.

The DataWindow Designer is a standalone IDE containing the DataWindow and Database “Painters”. DataWindow Designer is shipped with DataWindow .NET primarily to allow you to create and modify DataWindowObjects. The DataWindow Designer installation module subsequently detects that the improperly invoked instance of Visual Studio is still running, and prompts you with this status.

Click “OK” on this message box and the installation runs to a successful completion. The admonishments in the message boxes seem to be innocuous and seem not to result in any negative impact to the installation.

You can then open Visual Studio Solutions that utilize DataWindow .NET 2.5. At design time, you can statically assign a DataWindowObject to a DataWindow Control (for those new to the DataWindow, this is somewhat analogous to inserting a DVD into a DVD player).

In DataWindow .NET 2.5 with Visual Studio 2005, you can right mouse click on the DataWindow Control, and from the resulting popup menu, choose to edit the DataWindowObject.

 This allows you to modify the DataWindowObject within Visual Studio, without leaving the IDE.

This is the only functionality that is gone from the DataWindow .NET 2.5 experience when implementing it with Visual Studio 2008.

Now let’s preview for you how the installation and the development process will differ with Visual Studio 2008.

DataWindow .NET 2.5 with Visual Studio 2008

As with the installation to Visual Studio 2005, in this walk through SQL Anywhere is assumed to already be installed.

The installation module for DataWindow .NET proceeds without error, with a status message reporting that it is “Registering DataWindow .NET components…”. This module’s portion of the installation proceeds to completion without error.

However, soon after the installation module of the DataWindow Designer begins registering components, a messagebox displays an error, “Error 1904.Module C:\Program Files\Sybase\DataWindow Designer 2.5\DWPainter.dll failed to register. HRESULT –2147220473. Contact your support personnel.”

A second and a third error message display close on the heels of the first…“Error 1904.Module C:\Program Files\Sybase\DataWindow Designer 2.5\DWPrj.dll failed to register. HRESULT –2147220473. Contact your support personnel.”…and…”Error 1904.Module C:\Program Files\Sybase\DataWindow Designer 2.5\QryPainter.dll failed to register. HRESULT –2147220473. Contact your support personnel.”

After the user closes these three messageboxes, the installation of the DataWindow Designer completes without further apparent error.

Once you open a copy of one of your DataWindow .NET 2.5 solutions and convert it to be used with Visual Studio2008…

 …the observant user will notice that in the Solution Explorer, the DataWindowObject Project is “unavailable”.

These error messages and the subsequent deficiency in the Solution Explorer indicate that the DataWindow Designer components that allow DataWindowObjects to be developed within the Visual Studio 2008 have not registered and that this functionality will not be available within the IDE.

The fully functional workaround to this is to open DataWindow Designer 2.5 from the program group, run it as a separate IDE and then create and modify DataWindowObjects at will.

Developers may still use the Properties grid for the DataWindow Control in VS to statically assign a DataWindowObject to the Control, modify the Object in the DataWindow Designer IDE, then switch back to the Visual Studio IDE to reload the modified Object. Developers can then run and deploy their solutions with all the functionality of the DataWindow intact.