About marshaler extensions

Marshaler extensions can act as bridges between PowerBuilder and other components, such as EJB components, Java classes, and Web services, as long as those components can be called from C++.

To create a marshaler extension, build a PBX that contains at least one class that implements the IPBX_Marshaler interface, as well as one or more native classes. The extension must contain code that associates the marshaler with a proxy for the component you want to call.

If you build a marshaler extension, you should also provide a tool that generates proxies so the components can be called from PowerBuilder. For example, PowerBuilder provides a marshaler extension for calling EJB components from PowerBuilder, and it provides a tool for generating proxies for EJB components.

This chapter provides an overview based on the Java Marshaler sample application, which can be downloaded from the PowerBuilder Code Samples Web site at https://www.appeon.com/developers/library/code-samples-for-pb, and shows some extracts from the sample.

This chapter describes the major tasks involved in:

This chapter does not show detailed code samples, and the fragments shown simplify the coding involved. For a more complete understanding of the process of building a marshaler extension, download the sample available on the Web site.