A new PowerBuilder target builds applications using the Microsoft WCF model

Currently, PowerBuilder only creates traditional, WS-I profile conformant Web Services in PowerBuilder. This is leveraged through the ASP.NET framework and built on top of PB.NET Web Forms applications and runtime. It is made up of an .asmx file and an ASP.NET Web Service class that is built into a separate .NET assembly, both deployed to a virtual folder of an IIS server. A traditional ASP.NET Web Service has limited functionalities; for example, it supports only HTTP and HTTPS transports, and XML message encoding and transport level security.

WCF is the Microsoft unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments. When compared to a traditional Web Service, a WCF Service supports more transports, including HTTP(S), TCP, MSMQ, and Named Pipes. It also provides both transport and message level security, as well as many other WS enhancement specs, for supporting such things as Reliable Messaging, Transaction. PowerBuilder 12.5 provides a new target to take advantage of this new programming model.