What is the EAServer Upgrade Path?

[Former Member]

One of our major systems, created in 1995, is currently deployed under PowerBuilder 10.5.

We use EAServer 5.5 to make selected reports available via the web as PDFs. These are dynamic reports, generating their results based on user specified input parameters.

I've been asked to come up with recommendations on possible upgrade paths for this functionality.

I understand that there is a more recent version of EAServer, but I have heard that migration to the more recent version is difficult, and that the more recent version has problems, and is less stable than the tried-and-true 5.5 version. In fact, when I go to the Sybase site and look for information on EAServer, I get directed to pages talking about SAP NetWeaver. So upgrading to EAServer 6 doesn't really look like a great long-term solution.

Can anyone give us any recommendations for a good upgrade path for our existing reporting functionality?

[Former Member]

Hi Guys & Gals

Since EAS is now official EOL at the end of this year I have been looking at the options open to us.

My preferred route is to go Fat Client and then Appeon, has anyone converted to FAT client who could shed some light on the potential pitfalls of ding so.

Cheers

David

[Former Member]

Hi David;

   FYI: The latest version of my Foundation Classes for PB & Appeon have been enhanced to allow the PB developer to build any type "Look & Feel" of any website that you typically see on the web today. I will be presenting this and other PB / Appeon insights at the NC PB Conference in March 2014 ...

Great White North Technical Evangelist: PowerBuilder Conference (March 2014)

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member]

Chris,

Sadly I cannot make that event.

The problem is that there are a good number of EAS based applications that need to move onto a supported architecture. Quite possibly a FAT client would suffice as the need/desire for n-tier application has gone. So I'm thinking that we should be offering a 2 phase approach.

1. Go to FAT client

2. Having got to FAT client then this opens the opportunity to use Appeon if that is of interest to the client.

I'm just looking to tap into the depth of experience out there, just to highlight the issues to be considered when converting to FAT client for an EAS application.

Any thoughts or comments would be welcome

Regards

David

[Former Member]

FYI ... Great White North Technical Evangelist: Appeon Web

[former_member190719]

If SAP was to come out tomorrow and announce the end-of-life for the product (not something I'm expecting, just a hypothetical situation), I would suggest that you have a couple of options.

1.  Convert the existing deployed objects into either ASP.Net ( PB Classic ) or WCF ( PB.Net ) web services.  This would require quite a bit of rewrite.  Note also that if you are currently using the GetFullState, SetFullState, etc. approach to passing datawindow data, that PB.Net and PB Classic use different (and incompatible) formats for passing the data.

2.  Wait and see if SAP provides the capability to deploy PowerBuilder objects into NetWeaver with PowerBuilder 15.  It was mentioned as part of the roadmap.  However, the also mentioned that the would deploy as servlets rather than EJBs, so you could still be looking at some rewrite.

Given that the 2nd option isn't available yet to evaluate, you might just consider continuing with your current configuration for a while.  Is there something that it isn't supporting now that you need?  As they say, "no upgrade ever goes unpunished", so you'd only want to upgrade if there were significant new capabilities resulting from it.

[Former Member]

I like your final point. I'd definitely prefer to just leave things alone. However, EAServer 5.5 has already hit End of Life (back in 2011) and our instance is currently running under Win2003, which will go away in 2015.

Hopefully, it can be run under Win2013, but we're going to have to confirm that if we intend to stick with it for a while.

It kind of feels like Sybase/SAP has abandoned us and left us without good options.

[Former Member]

This from our system administrator:

Starting with Windows 2008 R2, all versions of Windows server are 64-bit only.

It may be possible to upgrade in place to Windows 2008 32-bit which extends our EOL for the OS to 1/14/2020.  Any other upgrade would require a new server to be built from scratch.  I found several people asking about the possibility of installing EAServer 5.5 on Windows 2008 x64, but there were no answers from anyone able to do it successfully.

And he corrected me - latest version of Windows is 2012, not 2013.

[former_member190719]

However, EAServer 5.5 has already hit End of Life (back in 2011)

True.  My company still supports applications that are still written in PB 9 (EOL in 2005) and 10.5 (EOL in 2008).  As long as they continue to work on the new operating systems fine, we don't have enough of a reason to give the customer to pay for the effort for a migration to a new version.

[Former Member]

Hi Sue;

   FYI: I just helped Agriculture Canada migrate their EAS 5.5 to W2008R2 earlier this year. There is no problem running 32bit applications on that version of MS-Windows.  

HTH

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member]

Thanks - that was helpful.

We've installed EAS 5.5 on Windows 2008 SP2, the last 32-bit Win OS, and it seems to run fine there. That OS is expected to be around until 2020, which is farther out that one can reasonably plan for anyway.

[Former Member]

A customer of mine is using EAS 5.5 on Windows 2008 R2 64bit without any problems.
Instandly we migrate to EAS 6.3. But it´s a hard way 🙂

[Former Member]

Hi Sue;

   Sorry, I should mentioned that Agriculture Canada's implementation was using the 64bit version of the O/S! EAS as a 32 bit application works well under that! 

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member]

Hi Sue;

  EAS v5.5 was Sybase's best release of the application server. Since going to v6.x - EAS has not been the same - functionally, stability or performance wise.

  Sybase has not been enhancing EAS since 6.3 and the main developers and architect have been reassigned to other Sybase products (and now SAP) for many years. AFAIK (sorry to be blunt here) there is no migration path for EAS applications. Even NetWeaver is whole different architecture than EAS and does not support NVUO's (aka the PBVM) anyway - so its a non-starter.

I keep hoping that SAP will wake up to the fact that they need to bring back Distributed PowerBuilder (DPB) to replace the soon to be EOL for EAS. DPB was the forerunner to EAS and had all the bells and whistles for remote NVUO support .. plus it was free!  🙂

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member]

We are in the same situation. We use EAServer 5.5 in production and try to migrate to
EAServer 6 without final success. We are also looking for a long-term solution
after EAServer 6 and are interested in a good upgrade path.