View from the Edge

OpenEdge 10.2A coming soon

OpenEdge 10.2A is scheduled to be available soon.  OpenEdge is the only platform that is optimized for the building of Service-Oriented Business Applications.  It differentiates from other offerings in the market because:

• Its purpose to simplify building your data- and transaction- and service-centric business applications with the highest productivity
• Integration and interoperability features are built-in, thus making it easy for you to connect to any application regardless of the technology or platform its built-on
• Support of a broad and rich set of open interfaces and integrated UI capabilities to ensure your applications can be built with any UI technology you choose, and even support multiple UIs with a single set of business logic
• High performance and scalable embedded database that ensures that all your data management needs can be met

OpenEdge 10.2A focus on the commercialization of the OpenEdge GUI for .NET which provides developers with the ability to build competitive, state of the art, contemporary user interfaces for their applications using Microsoft .NET Winforms technology.   What makes OpenEdge 10.2A offering better is that developers can do so in a highly productive manner because the new functionality is built into OpenEdge, integrating in OpenEdge Architect the new development tools such as the brand new Visual Designer and the extended Class Browser, empowering you to use only ABL, the best business-purposed programming language, and being fully compatible and interoperable with your existing OpenEdge GUI, to adopt at your own pace.

No one else provides such ease of use, productivity and business functionality, all within a single purpose development environment.

But 10.2A is anticipated to have much more than the GUI for .NET!  From a host of customer-driven usability and performance enhancements in OpenEdge Architect, as well as new XML and WSDL editors, to more OO extensions including garbage collection, through a new TIMEZONE session attribute to ease the deployment and reduce the operation costs of global applications, or sparse ProDataSet XML serialization for lower resources and increased performance, or OpenEdge server products support for Windows 2008 64-bit, to mention just a few.

The very high number of members and level of participation in the 10.2A Beta program, one of our largest and exciting beta programs ever, should be a good indication of the enthusiasm and anticipation that the Progress community is showing for OpenEdge 10.2A.  So, stay tuned for more information coming soon, and hang on, just a few more weeks to go!

Salvador

* For informational purposes only. Information in this posting may not be interpreted as any commitment on behalf of Progress, and future development, timing and release of any features or functionality described remains at our sole discretion.

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and Progress OpenEdge

Some replies and comments to my previous blog RIA Rich Clients mainstream in 2-5 years? Progress customers have them since the year 2000! made it clear that the concept of Rich Internet Applications is still confusing to many; In that blog I explained that Progress Software has had RIA Rich Clients since the year 2000, with the introduction of our product Progress® WebClient™.

But RIA Rich Clients are only one of the types or categories of RIA. In this posting I will briefly introduce the major RIA categories and the options that OpenEdge® customers have to use them.

Let's start with a definition: What are Rich Internet Applications (RIA)?:  Rich Internet Applications are Web applications with:

• Features and functionality of traditional desktop applications
• Robust user interface processing typically executed on the web client
• And with the program state and data on an application server

In summary RIA provides the look, feel and user experience of an event-driven GUI beyond the traditional page request/response HTML model, and with the deployment and management functionality of the Web.

Note that although the definition does not state technology, or deployment methodology, many use (wrongfully) RIA and AJAX as synonyms. The analysts, the market and software vendors have established two major RIA categories: Web browser-based RIA, and Desktop-based RIA.

Web browser-based RIA are applications where the user interface runs in a Web browser, generally using (D)HTML, sometimes enriched with AJAX. Subcategories within Web browser-based RIA include:

• Lightweight AJAX: Generally open source JavaScript libraries such as YUI, Dojo, Prototype, ExtJS, etc.
• Heavyweight AJAX: Frameworks that have Web browser and usually server side components that provide added functionality like Web services support, REST support, database integration, etc. Some frameworks include visual designer tools as well. Examples of heavyweight AJAX frameworks include GWT, Backbase, Nexaweb, OpenLazslo, ASP.NET, JSP among others
• RIA Platforms or Browser Plug-ins: Include Adobe Flash/Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, Java Applets, etc.

OpenEdge customers can implement any of these RIA using Progress WebSpeed or the OpenEdge Open Client for .NET or OpenEdge Open Client for Java.

Desktop-based RIA are applications where the user interface runs outside the Web browser using client-side technologies, such as Progress WebClient, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), Sun Microsystems Java FX, Microsoft .NET, or Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP), to name just a few. These are the RIA Rich Clients that I referred to in my earlier blog.

Again, OpenEdge customers can implement these RIA using Progress WebClient (running Windows GUI or .NET), Microsoft ClickOnce with OpenEdge Open Client for .NET, Java WebStart with OpenEdgeOpen Client for Java, or Adobe AIR using Open Client for Java.

One of the most (if not the most!) important consideration when implementing RIA for business applications is to empower the developers with maximum choice. With the current state of technologies, the Web browser-based RIAs are best suited for infrequent or occasional users due to their limited richness compared to those in the desktop category. On the other hand, the Desktop-based RIAs are more appropriate for power users.

As we have seen, albeit very briefly, OpenEdge provides comprehensive choice and support of RIAs. We ensure that OpenEdge is flexible so that you can use whatever technology you want to choose to fit the needs of your customers, and we empower a service-oriented architecture that allows any and all their RIAs to access a unique set of business logic, data management, and service components running on the application server.

Hopefully this will help shed some light to the evolving RIA. As always, feel free to comment or post questions for further clarification.

Salvador

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RIA definition from Wikipedia

RIA Rich Clients mainstream in 2-5 years? Progress customers have them since the year 2000!

In the recent research note “Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2008”¹, published 7 July 2008 (Gartner document ID Number: G00159447),  Gartner provides a comprehensive analysis of user interface technologies for the Web throughout the Hype Cycle² stages: from Technology Trigger to Plateau of Productivity through Peak of Inflated Expectations.   In addition, for each technology Gartner assigns a projection of Years to Mainstream Adoption.

The section of the document that caught my attention and inspired me to write this blog is ‘RIA Rich Client’ by Ray Valdes.   Gartner defines ‘RIA Rich Client’ to refer to ‘…a subset of Rich Internet Application (RIA) platforms that consist of outside-the-browser client-side technology, such as Adobe Air, Sun Microsystems’ Java FX, Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation, Eclipse Rich Client Platform and IBM Lotus Expeditor…’   Gartner places ‘RIA Rich Client’ in the Peak of Inflated Expectations stage with 2-5 years to Mainstream Adoption.

This is good news for Progress® customers because they have been using RIA Rich Client ‘world-class business applications³ since the year 2000, when we first introduced Progress® WebClient™ with IntelliStream™!

Progress WebClient – a product of the Progress OpenEdge® platform to deploy, provision and run Windows-desktop GUI business applications outside-the-browser over the Internet, Intranet or LAN – provides the same support for Windows-desktop graphical user interfaces as the traditional Client/Server OpenEdge client product. Once users install WebClient on their PC (one time download), they can quickly download the user interface components they need and run the application. 

You can launch Progress WebClient either from a shortcut or from a Web browser, but it does not actually run in the browser. WebClient runs in its own window as a separate application, not as a traditional plug-in to a Web browser, and not using emulation (e.g. Citrix or Terminal Services).

IntelliStream™ is a Progress technology to automate deployment and provisioning.  IntelliStream features a flexible, server-based provisioning model where ISVs can choose whether they want to provision the application from Web servers, file servers or even on OpenEdge AppServers.  IntelliStream enables WebClient to determine whether the application components have changed and need to be updated. Then WebClient downloads only those user interface resources to the users’ PC. It delivers exactly the parts of an application that end users need, when they need them. 

But we’ve not been standing still since the year 2000.  Because business power users need state-of-the-art user interfaces, WebClient has evolved to support .NET Winforms as well.

In summary, Progress WebClient retains all the richness of the traditional GUI clients but with the reach of the Internet, and automates deployment and provisioning for flexibility, ease of use and to keep the costs down, that is: Rich Client RIAs. 

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References:
¹ Hype Cycle for Web and User Interaction Technologies, 2008
Publication Date: 7 July 2008 ID Number: G00159447
David Gootzit, Gene Phifer, Ray Valdes, Nikos Drakos, Anthony Bradley, Kathy Harris, Daniel Sholler, Massimo Pezzini, Yefim V. Natis, Bill Gassman, David Mitchell Smith, David W. Cearley, Roy W. Schulte, Stephen Prentice, Nicholas Gall, William Clark, Anne Lapkin
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=159447

² Understanding Hype Cycles
http://www.gartner.com/it/products/research/methodologies/research_hype.jsp

³ Progress WebClient-based business applications in production include hundreds of enterprise applications across most verticals, for example: Financial and Stock Broker Mgmt (5500 users), Growers Mgmt  (7000 users), Hospitals Mgmt, Libraries Mgmt,  Managed Healthcare, and many more.

Business-orientation and object-orientation

With enhancements in the OpenEdge 10.1x release family, ABL (Advanced Business Language) is being extended with standard formal object-oriented (OO) functionality: objects, classes, methods, polymorphism, inheritance, delegation, statics, properties, strong typing, and more.

A big differentiator from other traditional object-oriented Languages is that ABL does not exclude other programming methodologies though: ABL is not “pure OO”, and at Progress we think that is a good thing for our customers!.   With ABL, developers can combine and integrate classes with procedures and vice versa.   As a matter of fact ABL is the only business application's development language with this capability! 

In addition, ABL’s unique and powerful built-in data awareness further differentiate it from the rest of mainstream development languages.  Again, ABL is the only business application’s development language that provides uniform and comprehensive built-in capabilities to access, manipulate and store data from different data sources and formats (including relational databases, XML, structured and unstructured files, user-defined formats, etc.) intertwining it with sophisticated business logic, making ABL particularly suited for world-class business applications.

The requirements of modern business applications for modularity, open access and reusability through disparate interfaces have never been higher. The object-oriented extensions ease the implementation of robust business applications that adhere to SOA principles, and integrate with other systems, platforms and applications --- including non-OpenEdge ones of course ---  in today’s interconnected and heterogeneous business environment, thus furthering our commitment to openness.

Where encapsulated, modular, reusable functionality is required, developers can build on the inherent capabilities provided by ABL’s formal object-orientation. Where tasks, workflows or processes are needed they can take advantage of its continued support for procedural development methodologies.

We are very excited to hear from customers using ABL object-oriented extensions (OOABL for short) reporting that they are indeed helping them simplify their Service-Oriented Business Applications, and in some cases make their code up to 40% smaller --- your mileage may vary ---, with less integration points which makes the code more uniform and easier to reuse. 

I encourage everyone to take a look at the OOABL extensions.  Even if you are not familiar with object-orientation I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with their ease of use and you’ll be able to quickly realize development productivity benefits, and will make your applications even more robust.  And remember, you can adopt and use them at your own pace alongside or integrated with procedural methodologies.   And stay tuned, there’s much, much more to come!

Of OpenEdge, Toasters and Vacuum Cleaners

Are toasters and vacuum cleaners ultimate examples of commodities? Of course!, right? Well, think again.

A few months back I read ‘The Myth of Commoditization’ by Michael Schrage, an article in the ‘MIT Sloan Management Review’ magazine and ever since I find myself getting back to the facts and the concepts masterfully described by Mr. Schrage in his two-page article.

By know, I hope that you’re a little intrigued and you will want to read on this, my first, OpenEdge Perspectives blog. There are many aspects of what Progress Software has done with OpenEdge over the years that in my opinion share parallelisms with Toasters and Vacuum Cleaners not being commodities: Quite the contrary, retaining and extending our, as their’s intrinsic and perceived value. Progress (the product and the company shared the name back then) was first released in the early 1980s and throughout 25 years of innovation cycles driven by our customers (Thank you!), the market and the IT industry we have kept our mission: “Simplify the job of building the world’s best business applications”.

How many evolutions and revolutions!: From the minis, hosts, personal computers, client-server, application servers, to the Internet. From character, GUI, one-tier, two-tier to global all-tier. From procedural, event-driven, object-oriented to SOA and software-as-services. How many opportunities to become commodity! And nevertheless Progress is not.

As information technologies evolved, the more the unfulfilled promises from many for simple, easy to use offerings to build long-lasting and ever-changing business applications. Simplify is difficult!. First you need to make something possible. Many products stop there. Then you can simplify. Very few actually do.

Let me tell you a story: Long ago, when I was a programmer using Progress and working on-site, one of the company’s line of business manager said to me: ‘You see, I’ve been looking for a while at what you do and no matter what I ask you to do, or how complex my request may be, you always, always do the same thing: You start a tool that I noticed is called Procedure Editor. Then you type a few lines of code which for the most I can actually understand and voilà you have the information I needed. Quite often in a format that is not pretty I have to say, but boy you are fast!’

That company had Progress-based applications, and a bunch of other ones they had purchased, acquired or developed over the years. All in all a hodge-podge of C-ISAM and an early Oracle database, COBOL, BASIC and some C, and an IBM mainframe with RPG of course. We had installed Progress and the Oracle and C-ISAM DataServers (back then Progress called them Gateways). Many of the ad-hoc requests I was getting from LOB managers meant to cross-reference and join information from many of theses systems, and yes, I always started with the Procedure Editor, connecting to the data sources, looking at their schemas (nevermind some were not even relational), and writing a few lines of ABL. Such was the power of Progress.

Many customers tell me that today they are doing similar things with OpenEdge Architect with IntelliSense, auto-completion, dragging-and-dropping from database schemas to the code editor and the works compared to my character-based Procedure Editor. Perhaps some of them even have to gather information from web services. What’s the drill? Get and look at the WSDL, connect, and RUN, where I used to connect to Progress, Oracle and C-ISAM, check the schemas and RUN.

So what’s the moral? Our customers tell me that Progress OpenEdge’s unique, intrinsic and sustained value to them is its business focus. If we managed to simplify building complex business applications including reading, writing, and managing data from displarate data sources, now we are simplifying to build, extend and integrate heterogeneous business applications using messaging, Enterprise Service Bus, Web services, and SOA-principles with OpenEdge, .NET, Java and standard interfaces.

Progress cannot just make things Simple, because businesses are not.  We make things Simpler! As for Toasters and Vaccuum Cleaners, commoditization is a misleading guide to innovation, a race to the bottom. At Progress Software we prefer races to the top. In the long run, everything is not a toaster. Not even toasters.