Can someone please shed some light on different possibilities of build automation for, PB 12.NET applications. Since PB is .NET, can tools like NAnt or CruiseControl (with MSBuild) can be used to build and deploy the applications.
Basically, Can it be ORCAScript / ECrane PowerGEN independent.
I'm usually wary of "never say never", but I'm pretty sure your answer is no.
To call the PowerBuilder compiler, you need to call PB's ORCA API. The IDE does that. ORCAScript provides you a command line interface to that. PowerGen provides a GUI front end (and lots of additional functionality) to that.
However, I'd expect you could use ORCAScript or PowerGen from these tools. For example, here's a blog post describing leveraging ORACScript in CruiseControl with NAnt. PowerGen has a very robust set of command line options, and will give you more power and opportunities from the command line (e.g. PBL optimization, more efficient bootstrapping).
Good luck,
Terry.