>>There's also Powerbuilder, once a red-hot tool (here in DC area, anyway), but now it seems to be a falling-off trend.
>
>Here in Peru Powerbuilder is the hottest tool for developing database-based applications. Is it the same in the U.S.?

PB is not hot anymore here. 5-8 years ago, PB was very hot. But it became "too hot," and we couldn't find good PB developers for what the US gov't will pay contractors (or regular employees). Only mediocre to poor PB developers were available. So PB basically priced itself out of the gov't market, "inadvertantly," for most gov't agencies. A very good PB specialist can still find very good-paying work in the area, but not much with the gov't or the gov't contractors (which is the majority of the IT work in the region), unless they will settle for less pay than they once made, or hope to get.

My agency is still doing PB upgrades on pre-existing PB apps, but not starting any new ones with PB, due to past problems stated above. We also stopped using Sybase for new enterprise projects, and are converting all Server DBs to Oracle.

The Peoplesoft "hostile merger" mess helped cause IT people into a "wait-and-see" attitude, and PB/Sybase is considered to have a questionable future right now, by most of us.

To be fair, the same holds true for MS VS.NET here. No projects have yet begun with it in my entire agency, and aren't allowed to (but developers can buy .NET and play with it, to learn about it. In case we go that way someday, we want to be prepared some). But it's also a "wait-and-see" situation, while more and more consideration is given to open-source possibilities for cost reasons, for the future.

We are mostly happy with all our LAN/WAN/Web apps anyway (built with various tools, largely either PB or VFP or older C++/VB versions, also Java/J2E), and we see no need to convert or rebuild them anytime soon. The 2 main large systems I oversee are: 1 VFP (entire, w/native DB), 1 PB w/Sybase backend, and they both work fine (except the PB backend is now moving to Oracle, but no big deal there). So, why should we change good working systems? (rhetorical question).

So in that sense, both VFP & PB will be around for quite some time here. For occasional urgent situations, we can get high-pay authorized for VFP/PB contractor-specialists to come in, as-needed.

But really, *cybersecurity* (as well as physical security) is all the rage here, not dev tools or DBs or apps. Security, security, and more security...