View from the Edge

My First OpenEdge GUI Application, And In The Cloud Too !

Last week I built my very first OpenEdge GUI Application. I even used OpenEdge Architect to do it (I normally use vi for programming). The whole development environment was running up in the cloud. I performed this remarkable feat at a workshop during the Netherlands PUG meeting near Utrecht.

The workshop was ably directed by Peter van Dam, from Futureproof Software. He made it really easy for about 60 beginners to learn how to build a simple but functional GUI application with a login screen, an updateable data grid, ribbons, etc with an Office-2007-like appearance.

Each workshop student was given a login for an AMI on Amazon EC2 where the OpenEdge development environment was installed and configured, along with a few image files for icons, and a database with customer records already in it.  This was accessed using Windows Remote Desktop. Nobody had to install anything on their own machine. Peter led everybody through the exercise in two 90 minute sessions with a half-hour break between them. Since he was speaking in Dutch, I had some trouble understanding him.

Nearly everybody finished their application. I had some cosmetic bugs I didn't bother to fix (labels in the wrong place and stuff like that) so mine was not 100% complete.

A few observations:

0) Amazon EC2 works really well for this sort of thing. Dev tools, code, database, everything was somewhere in the cloud. You could start as many machines as needed and run them as long as needed.

1) I was pleasantly surprised at how responsive the GUI was, running Remote Desktop over a hotel Internet connection to Amazon's data center.

2) Developing with the Eclipse-based OpenEdge Architect tool in the cloud is a lot nicer than using some crappy development tool running in a web browser.

3) The Infragistics UI controls have a lot of functionality and are very complicated.  Without a cookbook, I could never have figured out what to do and which properties did what.

4) Programming by clicking, clicking, and more clicking with the mouse is really boring.

5) Boring or not, it's powerful.  You can get a lot done quickly.

One more thing: at the very beginning of the workshop, the hotel's router had a meltdown. It took about 90 minutes or so to get a replacement. Being clever folks, the Dutch PUG meeting organizers had scheduled two talks for after the workshop. So we did these first, while the router was being dealt with.

All in all, an excellent outcome. If I can do this, you can too.

7 Keys to Building and Deploying a Successful SaaS Application

Colleen in her blog post wrote about the 4 key things you want to focus on when transitioning your business to a SaaS model. She shared with you how you need to think about the pricing and packaging, about the infrastructure requirements and cost structure, about relationship with the customer that you are selling the service to and how that differs from selling them product, and lastly about the companies that with which you need to partner. And while in my experience, most Application Partners (ISV's if you prefer) that I talk to 1^st think about the fundamental changes that SaaS means to their business, and secondarily about what it means to the application, there are some key areas that you are going to want to focus on relative to your application in order to have a successful and effective SaaS strategy that will stand the test of time. (I guess the mentality is… "If the biggest challenge with getting to SaaS is the application, I am in good shape!")

Now everyone may have their own list of what they think is important for building and deploying a successful SaaS application. Here at Progress we have over 250 Application Partners that have already deployed their application via SaaS. These are partners that we have work closely with to not only get their business to SaaS, but their application as well. Based on working with these partners, and lots and lots of discussions we have developed what we are calling the "The 7 Keys to Success". These are 7 areas that we think are so key and critical to all SaaS applications that everyone who is going to SaaS should consider them primary focus areas from a functional, architectural, and operational perspective for their SaaS-based application.

So what follows here is a brief introduction to the each of the 7 Keys. Over the next few weeks, entries will be posted to this blog that address each of the keys in more detail. In the mean time, think about what these "keys" mean to you, and how you are effectively addressing them within your SaaS-based application.

1. User Interface Flexibility
   
   Being able to easily use the UI technologies that meet the needs of the customer. UIs are as much about flash and sizzle as they are about usability and function. What's clear is that there are a huge number of UI technologies in the market today, and more coming out all the time. How do you decide which ones to use? Does your application need to support more than one type of UI to meet the needs of different types of users? How do you architect your application to support multiple UIs including the ones that you don't even know about yet?
   
2. Productivity
   
   Using a tool set and language that is highly productive and is focused and purposed for the type of business application that you are building.
   
   
3. Operational Excellence
   
   Scalability, reliability, availability, business continuity, disaster recovery, hosting choices, etc.
   
   
4. Security & Compliance
   
   Ensuring that data and applications are accessed only by those who need to know. Regulatory and other compliance requirements are putting a large amount of pressure on applications to incorporate more security capabilities. As an ISV, when you deploy your application via SaaS versus deploying on-premise it presents not only technical challenges from a security perspective, but introduces a certain amount of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) factor from your tenants who need to be assured that their data can't accidently fall into the hands of other tenants. What are the most relevant security issues facing SaaS providers, and what are some of best approaches for addressing them?
   
   
5. Multi-tenancy
   
   Going from 1 to N. Multi-tenancy is all about improving scalability and reducing costs by running multiple customers or tenants on a single instance of your application in such a way that they each believe that they are executing in isolation. It's all about sharing of resources. When you consider the infrastructure tier, database tier, and application logic tier of your application environment, there is actually more than one way of doing multi-tenancy because you may provide more sharing at one level and less sharing at another, so we can talk about degrees of multi-tenancy depending on how much sharing you do at each level. So what are some of different approaches to multi-tenancy, what benefits does each approach provide, and what are some of the ways of implementing each approach?
   
   
6. Integration
   
   Ability to easily integrate to any other application by supporting all relevant standards. As more applications move to the cloud and SaaS, a way to extend the value and reach of your application is by ensuring that it is integrateable, but what are the most relevant standards and approaches to doing standards-based integration in the cloud, and what are the tradeoffs with each approach.
   
   
7. Personalization and Customization
   
   Ensuring that the application looks and behaves as the tenant and the end-user want. Personalization focuses on doing that based on the user experience and past behavior whereas customization is performed by explicit settings. It may involve limiting or directing the information that a user views based on past requests, it may involve setting the skin of a screen for all users of a tenant based on company standards and regulations, etc. However, what are some of the types of information that you may want to personalize and/or customize, and what are some of the approach that you can use to manage this information?
   
   
   
   Ken Wilner

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the latest Forrester Consulting study

We wanted to find out more about the economic impact that Progress Partners may realize by building applications with OpenEdge versus using a non-Progress platform. To help us, we enlisted Forrester Consulting to do some research. You can see what they discovered in this new report:  The Total Economic Impact™ of Progress Software OpenEdge Platform. Among the revealing findings:

• Developing with OpenEdge was shown to be 40% more  productive than alternative platforms
• ISVs choosing OpenEdge are able to deliver their  application 30% faster to market than when using an alternative platform
• Once deployed the support staff productivity gain is 80%  as compared to alternative platforms

Get the full report to learn more.

Our New Year’s Gift to You…

Now that the holiday rush is over (phew!), we wanted to remind you that the latest version of OpenEdge is now available!   This release, version 10.2B, builds on previous OpenEdge 10 releases to further increase developer productivity, while still reducing the total cost of ownership of the business application.  We’ve added capabilities to fortify application security and compliance – a must have for SaaS. Other new features and enhancements will enable you to: 

·     Deliver applications that comply with the latest data privacy regulations

·     Simplify the deployment of applications via the Web

·     Increase visibility into operations

·     Accelerate delivery of service-based applications  

Making the upgrade is a no brainer. As one customer, Carl Verbiest from CCE NV says “As always what I love most about a new version, is you just change the executable and you’re up and running with existing code in a new OpenEdge version. You can use the new 10.2B features where needed without the need to rewrite you existing application – the migration is quick and easy”. 

So check it out.   Contact your account rep for more information or visit Progress.com.

Australia The Tour, Part 3: Melbourne

So Melbourne was the 3rd and final stop for this years Australia Exchange.  It's certainly been a different experience from the usual 3 day get together, and from what I can tell it seems to have been a big hit with those who attended.  Many of whom were able to attend for the first time due to the show coming to them, as opposed to the other way round!

Once we'd recovered from the weather shock we had a little downtime before the show started on the Friday.  I must admit from a personal point of view, having the travel day in between each of the session days has been huge bonus, otherwise the schedule would have been a killer.  So it was good to hit the gym, and for those that know me and have just fallen off their chairs, yes I went to the gym and ran!! Not very quick, admittedly, but hey something's better than nothing, right?

Not wishing to sound like a broken record, but just like the other cities, Melbourne was a complete sell-out which was great to see.  There's nothing worse than presenting to yourself!!  Once again the main themes presented certainly seemed to hit the right notes, with Multi-Tenancy and RIA peaking the most interest.  I must admit I've been pleasantly surprised by the reaction to the Multi-tenancy proposal, even by those who don't yet see SaaS as a big play for them today.

I was also reminded on this trip that I sometimes get so focused and involved into something that I often forget that not everyone is as obsessed as I am.  During this trip one of the topics that I mentioned time & time again during each day was Amazon EC2.  Currently living in the US I guess I take it for granted that in the IT world at least, people know that Amazon have a cloud strategy, even if they don't know the specific terms, so it was sobering to be asked at one of the after conference cocktail party's  if I was talking about the same Amazon that simply sold books!  It just shows it's good to get out of that ivory tower as much as possible!!!

The one common story from all the cities, and one that shows we still have a better job to do was around Progress Communities.  I was surprised how any people either hadn't really heard of it or didn't realize what it is.  Don't get me wrong there were many people who'd used it and got value from it, but it seemed there were more that hadn't.  That surprises me because if you're an OpenEdge user, Progress Communities is the key place for you to discover a huge amount of information relating to the product and best practices.  It's our main vehicle to deliver valuable content to you as users, and a mechanism by which you can post questions and comments around anything OpenEdge related.  In fact there are people within Progress, such as myself, who as part of their job are expected to participate in the activity that's going on, so if you do have a question or comment, the chances are the person who responds is more than likely the person responsible for that area of the product or maybe even implemented it!  I really do encourage you all to take a look, but don't just to look, participate.  

I'd like to take this opportunity to firstly thank all those who attended the sessions over the 3 days.  I realize it's not always easy to leave the office, especially in these current economic times, but without you the sessions would have been nothing.  I'd also like to thank the whole Progress Australia team for their hospitality during our visit.  There are too many names to call out individually but as always they made a long trip so much fun in addition to all the hard work.

Oh, and the highlight of the trip back, meeting will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas in the 'Chilli's To Go' at LAX.  Shelley even got his autograph.  See how we just mingle with the stars here at Progress!!!

'I've got a feeling' its time to go :)

Thanks for reading

Mike 

Australia The Tour, Part 2: Brisbane

Today we swapped sun soaked Brisbane for rain soaked Melbourne as we continue on our 3 city Australian Exchange tour.  Our final set of presentations are tomorrow (Friday) before we make the long journey back to Boston. OK, I know, you have no sympathy :)

But back to yesterday.  Brisbane was completely booked with once again 50+ people attending the day long event.  Brisbane certainly has it's own vibe, a little more relaxed than Sydney, but no less eager to participate.  During the tour I've been fortunate enough to share the OpenEdge roadmap detailing some of our thoughts and ideas for the next generation of OpenEdge.  Out of the potentially many new features, the one stand out proposal that generates the most questions & excitement is that of Multi-Tenancy.  Even for those not yet considering Software as a Service (SaaS), the thought of OpenEdge as a platform having built-in Multi-Tenancy capabilities right out of the box is a game changer.  Especially, if as hoped, it can be introduced in such a way that means little to no application changes for the thousands of OpenEdge applications out there today.  This feature alone would consolidate OpenEdge's leadership in the SaaS space offering end-users a huge library of Multi-Tenant applications almost over night.

As we've seen from other conferences, including the recent Exchange Online, the current hot feature in the product today is the OpenEdge GUI for .NET.  Shelley is constantly presenting to packed rooms, full of partners & direct customers eager to know how to make use of this great feature.  I had no personal involvement in the project that created it whatsoever, but each time I sit at the back of the room and listen to Shelley go through her pitch, my mind is always blown away by the engineering triumph that basically allows the running of a Visual Studio environment in OpenEdge Architect which is based upon Eclipse.  Not only that, but the fact that you can mix & match existing OpenEdge GUI with this next generation OpenEdge GUI for .NET is just a testament to the technical skills within Progress.  

As with Sydney, it was also good to see by show of hands how many people are currently using OpenEdge 10 and OpenEdge Architect.  I won't get on my soapbox again, but still it's good to see!

From a purely personal perspective, I'm also impressed by the number of people that have taken the OpenEdge Reference Architecture (OERA) to heart and are really embracing it's principles as they take their applications forwards.  One of the challenges we always face is knowing how well our best practices materials are being received, and used, so events like this give me the opportunity to talk to partners and gauge feedback.  So if you ever see me at any of our events feel free to grab me and give feedback.  I won't bite, promise!

We had a fantastic time in Brisbane and certainly from the feedback at the end of day Cocktail party, the attendees were going home happy after a full days content. Or maybe that was just the free booze talking!!

So tomorrow is our final day and if it's anything like the past few days it will be a blast.  We did by the way gain our hour back when we flew south from Brisbane to Melbourne, not that I still understand how it works.  I had some discussions at the cocktail party about this, but again all the reasons seemed to tie back to the cows!  Either that, or it's all about reducing the hours of sun light so as not to fade curtains!!

As always, thanks for reading

Mike

Australia The Tour, Part 1: Sydney

We finally arrived in Sydney on Friday, after leaving Boston on Wednesday, 20+ hours of flying and somehow managing to misplace Thursday!  If you've ever had the chance to travel 'down under' you'll know that the journey is well worth the effort.  I've been fortunate in my working life to travel to many cities around the world, and I must say that Sydney is one of the few I could happily call home.  Don't get too excited though Ken, I will be returning back to Boston...this time!!

I'm writing this post on Tuesday from Brisbane, the day after the PTW event in Sydney.  And what a great event it was.  The registrations were fully booked out with 50+ people attending the day long festivities.  As I mentioned in my previous post there was lots of great content, much of which which was delivered by local Progress employee's with Shelley and I delivering a few sessions each.  At the close of the event even I was starting to get fed up of me speaking, so thanks to all those who stuck with me through my sessions and didn't fall asleep, or if you did, thanks for not snoring :)

It was a great chance to catch up and talk with many Application Partners and Direct Customers about their current situations and challenges going forward, in addition to hopefully answering a question or two.  No matter where I go in the world I'm always impressed with attendee's passion for OpenEdge and what they do with it.  It was also great to note the number of hands that were raised when the room was asked who's currently using OpenEdge Architect.  If you're reading this and you're not currently using OpenEdge Architect, I strongly recommend you go and have a look at the latest version in OpenEdge 10.2a, it really does make you more productive as a developer.  And that's not just marketing speak, a number of people yesterday were more than happy to extol it's virtues.

So many thanks to all those that attended the Sydney event and helped make it a great success.

We've now rolled into Brisbane where we'll present the same event again to a new audience. I must say, it's strange to fly an hour North from Sydney to Brisbane, and then have to alter my watch an hour back!  I kind of understand it when you travel East/West, but North??  The locals tell me it's something to do with the cows!!!

I'm not sure what's going on with the weather since we arrived, but we seem to have brought the New England rain with us.  The weekend weather in Sydney was full of showers, and when we arrived in Brisbane is was approaching 80+ degree heat and sunny, but we've been here a couple of hours and now it's throwing it down with rain!!

From what I understand Brisbane is fully subscribed so it should be another great event.  I'll keep you posted, and next time remind me to tell you about the will power of an architect and a certain Australian biscuit/cookie.

Thanks for reading

Mike

OpenEdge Architect videos on Communities

With Exchange Online 2009 coming right up (September 15-17) I wanted to remind people of the availability of a set of introductory videos that cover a lot of the basic topics related to using OpenEdge Architect. They're all available directly from the OpenEdge home page on the PSDN area of Progress Communities:

http://communities.progress.com/pcom/community/psdn/openedge

There's a landing page for five introductory videos to get you started using Architect for the first time, covering topics such as creating your first Architect workspace and project, defining database connections for your workspace, setting project properties, building and running your project, and using the ABL Editor that's a central part of the value of developing in OpenEdge Architect. That page is here:

http://communities.progress.com/pcom/docs/DOC-101140

And then there's a continuing series of topics that go beyond the Getting Started series covering subjects such as defining and using perspectives and views, maintaining structured procedures created in the AppBuilder, using the ABL Debugger, and various more advanced features of the ABL Editor. Those sessions are all available here:

http://communities.progress.com/pcom/docs/DOC-101504

The videos are designed to be fairly self-contained, so that you can view what's of interest to you, though there is a recommended sequence to them that's indicated by their organization on the site. And they're kept to around seven or eight minutes each so that you're not overwhelmed with content and can try out what you've learned in each video before proceeding.

We're very interested in your feedback both on this specific set of presentations and on the general format that they use. We're already creating new video series, some accompanied by documents with text and code samples, to help you get started with other major parts of OpenEdge 10, including the support for classes and the GUI for .NET. Keep us posted on your comments and recommendations.

Eclipsecon 2009 and Eclipse 4.0

Recently I attended Eclipsecon 2009, an Eclipse community conference in Santa Clara, CA. Like previous years, the conference was very well organized and had sessions on various topics ranging from e4 (code name for Eclipse 4.0 release) to Cloud Computing. There was a lot of buzz and even a separate track for e4 - so let me begin by blogging on e4.

General sense I got was that Eclipse community has ambitious plans to make significant changes to Eclipse 4.0. More than 40 committers are working on Eclipse 4.0 release and the Eclipse community intends to deliver e4 Tech Preview in July, 2009 and the GA in summer 2010. They plan to provide a compatibility layer from Eclipse 3.x to Eclipse 4.x so there can be gradual adoption of Eclipse 4.0 J.  Following are some key highlights of the areas that they are planning changes –   

• There was talk of "How the current Eclipse platform UI is very rigid". To make the UI work across multiple platforms and web technologies, the SWT team is working on a model driven UI called XWT – which will leverage EMF based models and CSS style-sheets to render UI on multiple platforms and also on web using FLEX/action script, GWT or Silverlight. There is also separate effort to create declarative UI language for defining UI. So in summary, there is a lot of work and planning going on to provide different skins to the Eclipse platform.

• Eclipse resources are being enhanced to better support linked resources, groups and various resource filters are being added to Eclipse environment.

• Couple of Mozilla guys have teamed up with Eclipse committers and are working to provide ability to edit code from the web (by providing the same level of rich editing capabilities) using (I think) Bespin technology.

• There is a lot more work happening in different areas and I could go on ... but you get the idea. These are big changes and a lot of cool and new things to look forward to...

From OpenEdge Architect Perspective, we would need to keep an eye out on developments in e4 so that in future, we can leverage the full potential of the e4 to provide lot of these cool productivity enhancing new features to the OpenEdge developer community.

Leveraging all the OpenEdge Architect Has to Offer

I recently came back from a trip to Europe where I presented the OpenEdge Strategy and Roadmap at the ProAlpha user conference held in Frankfurt, as well as at the OpenEdge 10.2A Partner Technical Forum held in Frankfurt and Vienna.  And while it is always fun to be able to talk about our strategy and roadmap with customers, let me say what I found most impressive was seeing the way that our strategy is really starting to payoff for many of our customers specifically in the way they have enhanced and extended the functionality that is provided by OpenEdge Architect to provide their own purposed tools in OpenEdge Architect’s Eclipse-base framework.

For example, Gunnar Schug from ProAlpha discussed with me how they are working on building their own tools Eclipse-based tools for OpenEdge Architect that do code analysis to ensure that they fit in with ProAlpha’s coding conventions.  ProAlpha is also leveraging the Mylin Eclipse plugin to improve and automate task management as part of the SDLC lifecycle.

Robert Prediger from ic4b AG demonstrated his Web4Biz framework and showed how he used the BackBase Eclipse plugin to build an Ajax interface for his OpenEdge Content Management System application.  The back-end architecture is all OpenEdge ABL and Application Server driven.

Klaus de Vries and Klaus Erichsen from IAP demonstrated their OF-1 framework which allows an OpenEdge developer to generate an OpenEdge GUI, an OpenEdge GUI for .NET, Java, and an Ajax UI from a common model, based on common visual designer, and have integrated this all into OpenEdge Architect.

Mike Fechner  from  Consultingwerk  focuses his time  on mentoring application partners to embrace the new OpenEdge 10.2A capabilities. During the forum he demonstrated his Dynamics for .NET framework showing how he has extended the Dynamics framework to support the OpenEdge GUI for .NET interface.

He also introduced “WinKit – Windows Integration Toolkit”, which simplifies the programming model when using the new OpenEdge GUI for .NET feature by adding a “productivity layer”,  and also takes advantage of  smart coexistence capabilities to run classic OpenEdge GUI Windows in an OpenEdge GUI for .NET MDI container. 

He built and developed these controls using the OpenEdge GUI for .NET capabilities built into OpenEdge Architect, but the other great thing is because the visual designer built into OpenEdge Architect is so extensible, he can access these new controls directly in the visual designer itself.

But a slick user interface needs a powerful business application in order to be useful, and Mike is working very closely with Thomas Wurl from Taste IT Consulting for that part. Together they have set up a joint project to merge the concepts of ADM2 and OpenEdge Reference Architecture (OERA)  with the OpenEdge GUI for .NET and Object-Orientation.  This framework and set of design tools includes Mike’s Smart Component Library – “Smart” GUI for .NET Components – with Thomas’ “tic-Enterprise” Developer and Framework.

It generates  an object-oriented OERA (O3ERA) backend from an imported Database Schema, defining Business Entities and generating classes and everything needed to have a full OERA Implementation.  

The above are just a few examples of why the value of OpenEdge Architect is greater than just the functions and features that you get with the product.  If you are using OpenEdge Architect then great.  Start leveraging some of the more advanced features, learn about the OpenEdge GUI for .NET, and try building something with the Visual Designer.  And now is a great time to start learning all that the Eclipse community has to offer so head on over to the Eclipse Web site.

If you are not using OpenEdge Architect, then it’s time to get started.  Work with your Progress account team to figure out the best way to introduce OpenEdge Architect into your environment, and checkout the OpenEdge Developers Corner for lots of good content on how you can get started with OpenEdge Architect.

 

Ken