1. John Sadd Progress Fellow and OpenEdge Evangelist

2. creating the world’s best business applications.
Our Mission
Develop, Deploy, Integrate, Manage
We simplify
the job of
creating the world’s best business applications.
Main Point:
This mission has been consistent for Progress and OpenEdge always. Technologies advance, requirements change, expectations grow, but the mission stays the same.
Supporting Points:
- With OpenEdge, we always support requirements for development, deployment, integration, and management.
We don’t create the applications; that’s the partner’s business. We make it easier to create and support those applications.
We’re focused completely on technologies and platforms designed for solving business problems.

3. What Application Developers Need
Incorporate new capabilities and technologies to meet market and business demands
Automate business processes across customers, partners, suppliers
Repurpose existing functionality easily to meet new business requirements
Main Point:
All of the bullets on this slide point to one overriding customer requirement: Greater flexibility. It’s a simple fact that business requirements are changing faster then ever because business is changing faster then ever. The pace of business change has revealed just how fixed our applications and technology can be. The business can actually change faster then the technology (reinforced on next slide).
Supporting Points:
There’s been a dramatic change in business expectations. Businesses now expect processes to change almost constantly, and they need software that supports that requirement.
New technologies and capabilities must be adoptable without forcing expensive system replacements of upgrades. Customers want all the advantages without the disruptions and expense.
The automation of the supply chain has led to requirements for much more flexible and extendable systems. Traditional process boundaries have been erased, with processes being in-sourced and out-sourced on a regular and changing basis.
There is already a rich collection of functionality in most applications. But it is too often built in such a manner that it cannot easily be re-purposed or exposed to new processes. So it is expensively (and often inaccurately) reproduced with every change to the business.

4. “…Service-oriented architectures provide the framework that will enable IT to offer value in the form of business agility…"
Jason Bloomberg
“Principles of SOA”
Application Development Trends, 2003
Main Point: The motivation for SOA is provided by the requirement for business agility. Business requirements are changing at a pace that cannot be supported by more traditional application architectures and approaches. SOA is a framework that depends on collections of loosely-coupled, standards-based business process services that can react appropriately to business requirement changes, hence the ‘agility’.
Supporting Points:
There are three fundamental principles to SOA that must be implemented regardless of technology. They are:
The business drives the services, and the services drive the technology. Services are an abstraction layer between the business requirements and the technology requirements. Interfaces and integration points are at the service level.
Business agility is a fundamental business requirement. Applications that endure will by pliable. There will not be a set of concrete requirements that don’t change. From the hardware up to the user interface, the architecture must be easily enhanced and re-configured to meet changing needs.
A successful SOA is always in flux. SOA is not about the traditional “build a house” metaphor of development where both the steps and the outcome are predetermined. An SOA approach changes fluidly as the business changes – bringing in new functionality, expanding existing functionality, outsourcing functionality where appropriate (Web services), and dropping functionality when it is no longer needed. This will, of course lead to new ways of thinking about and building applications.
Quote: The above quote comes from an article in Application Development Trends, March 2003, Volume 10, Number 3. The detail listed above is, in part, taken from that article.

5. your core business value
Every day there is…
Someone who wants to do something you used to do
Opportunities for outsourcing services
your application
your business partner
your core business value

6. your core business value
Every day there is…
Someone who wants you to do something they used to do
Opportunities for value-added services
your application
your business partner
new
value
your core business value

7. Every day there is…
Someone who wants to share information that you previously have not dealt with
Opportunities to provide integration points
your application
your business partner
new
value

8. your core business value
Every day there is…
Someone who wants information that you have not previously shared
Opportunities to satisfy integration demands
your application
your business partner
your core business value

9. The Solution: Service-Oriented Architecture
Principles
Business functionality encapsulated as services
Services have well-defined interfaces
Services deployed for easy access
Main Point:
We’ll define SOA not by technology, but rather by principles and best practices. The concept of a set of services, with each service representing a defined set of business functionality, is the key defining element. Applications themselves become collections of services, either internally developed or externally sourced. The industry has established a set of best practices for following this definition that can, in theory, be used for most applications and with most technologies available on the market today.
Supporting Points:
The concept of a service is as much a business concept as a technology one. A common set of functionality can be encapsulated as a service with a set of interfaces available to other parts of the application or to the outside world if appropriate.
The well-defined interface is critical. It separates out SOA from simply componentized software. The interface must be built such that it can be rendered as a service across technology platforms, across applications, and across enterprises.
Web services is often used as the service interface, but Web services is simply an enabler. It is the organization of the encapsulated functionality that really matters.
There is no set definition of business functionality – it varies based on the business and the application. Domain experts must do the definition based on experience and the expectations for application interoperability.
As SOA takes hold, the industry is coming to realize that interoperability is best done at the message level – not the data level, not the UI level, but rather at the point where applications take input and produce output. In other words, at the business logic level.
Applications created by aggregating services

10. SOA: The Future of Business Applications = Opportunities for the Community
Modular Application Services
Expanding opportunities for all of Progress and our customers
Distributed, Service-oriented Integration Platform
Main Point:
Progress has all of the offerings needed for SOA, and we’re concentrating on bringing all of them to our customers interested in SOA.
Supporting Points:
Progress Software’s OpenEdge 10 is well designed and growing in its ability to support the building and deployment of modular application services.
Sonic brings the necessary disciplines to web services and network access to truly enable real-world complex SOA environments.
ObjectStore and DataDirect are concentrating on bringing a common set of business services to SOA environments with such things as advanced data access and event management.
Key Shared SOA Services

11. OpenEdge Reference Architecture Guidelines for SOBA
Design for longevity, flexibility, and competitive advantage
Accommodates evolving business requirements
Anticipates trends in technology
Provides agile and flexible architecture
Main Point(s): There are 3 ways Progress enables you to seize the opportunities SOA brings: Architecture, Product, and Standards. 1) In addition to delivering the OpenEdge platform, we are delivering best practices for building competitive business applications. 2) The Reference Architecture is designed to make it easier to develop and sustain competitive advantage.
Supporting Points:
The OpenEdge Reference Architecture (OERA) was designed as our view of the appropriate architecture for Service Oriented Business Applications (SOBA). As such, it is tuned to both the requirements of SOA and the capabilities of OpenEdge.
OERA, presented in summary here, is designed to make it easier to introduce both technical and functional advances into an existing application as needed and as available.
Like most software architectures, OERA is designed as a theoretical blueprint. It is possible to use OpenEdge 10 to write software that adheres 100% to the principles demonstrated in the architecture. Each partner, however, will need to decide which aspects of the architecture to use, and which to ignore.
OERA doesn’t require complete “purity”: It is possible to achieve the desired results without some elements of the architecture, and it is possible to mix-and-match this approach with legacy code and/or more traditional architectures.

12. OpenEdge 10 Product Platform for SOBA
A complete platform that delivers everything needed by competitive business applications
Designed for productivity
Architected for service-oriented applications
Proven capabilities and performance
Client Processing
Integration Platform
Application Servers
Main Point:
OpenEdge 10 provides all of the distinct products necessary for producing OERA-based (and therefore SOA-compliant) applications. Going forward, each of these products will be strengthened and enhanced to better serve their individual place in the architecture.
Supporting Points:
For Client Processing, OpenEdge offers Client Networking, Web Client, Character Client, and WebSpeed.
OpenEdge 10 interoperates with SonicESB and Sonic Integration Suite as an integration platform. It also offers Web Services as a native integration technology.
For Application Servers, OpenEdge 10 offers both AppServer and WebSpeed Transaction Server.
For Data Management, OpenEdge 10 offers both native databases (Progress RDBMS), and 3rd party database support through the SQL Server, Oracle, and ODBC DataServers.
All of the products are tightly coupled with proprietary interfaces for productivity, performance, and simplicity, but all support a variety of standards that also allow for interaction with comparative offerings from other vendors.
Data Management Servers

13. OpenEdge 10 Standards for SOBA
Open standards to ensure flexibility and meet requirements without compromising productivity
Platform independent
Industry standards support
Open business logic approach
Data access and storage choices
HTML, .NET
XML, JMS, ESB
Web Services, XML, Java, .NET
Main Point:
SOA requires support for standards. OpenEdge 10 is a far cry from the tightly-bound 4GL/Database that many people associate with Progress. We support standards at every level and with every product. What we don’t do is depend on those standards as the only type of interactivity between the components. This sets us apart from other 4GL products in our flexibility and from other “standard” platforms in our performance and productivity.
Supporting Points:
Flexibility actually starts at the platform, where OpenEdge not only supports a variety of platforms, it supports mix-and-match environments both within a component and between components.
Industry standard support is a great thing, but only when it doesn’t impact performance or capabilities. That’s why we support our own protocols and linkages in addition to the industry standards. Open when you need it, more performance when you don’t.
One of the strengths of Progress has always been that the application developer doesn’t need to know how the underlying technologies work and work together. That’s still true of our own protocols, and it is a characteristic that we try to bring to the open standards technologies as well. For example, with our Web services interface, application developers really don’t have to learn very much about how SOAP and WSDL work – we do that for them.
ODBC/JDBC, SQL, Oracle
Oracle, OpenEdge, DB2, SQL Server
XML, Structured Data

14. OpenEdge 10.0 -- Focusing on SOBA: Emphasis on Capability
OpenEdge ProDataSets
New data types
Other language enhancements
Business Logic
Web services
Sonic ESB adapter
Enhancements to XML capabilities
Integration
Unicode client
Open Client for .NET
UI Independence
Main Point(s):
The big release for 2004, of course, was OpenEdge 10. That release includes improved capabilities in all four of the focus areas. The feature that’s been declared the favorite of the Progress community is the ProDataSet. Progress developers are fulfilling our vision for this feature by using it as a central point of data collection and manipulation.
Supporting Points:
In business logic, the ProDataSet was the big piece, although many of our users cheered over the new language features, the size restrictions that were removed in business logic, and the new data types that made it possible to work with new types of data.
In integration, the biggest news was Web services, but the new SonicESB adapter will prove to be the most important in the long run. Improvements in security, XML capabilities, and SQL also help in integration.
OpenClient for .NET receives most of the attention in the UI area, but improvements have also been made in the GUI clients for OpenEdge, including the new Unicode client.
The most significant feature in the data management area was the introduction of Type II Storage Areas. Just as important for the future, OpenEdge 10 laid the groundwork for 7X24 availability and on-line utilities. DataServers and SQL also received important capability and performance improvements, particularly the SQL Server DataServer.
Type 2 storage areas
High availability features
DataServer and SQL enhancements
Database

15. Under Development D I S C L A I M E R
This talk includes information about potential future products and/or product enhancements.
What I am going to say reflects our current thinking, but the information contained herein is preliminary and subject to change. Any future products we ultimately deliver may be materially different from what is described here.
D I S C L A I M E R

16. OpenEdge 10.1x: Emphasis on Productivity
Core services for business applications
Tools for business logic
Improvements in language productivity
Business logic
Continued emphasis on Web services
Tools for service interface generation
Enhanced integration with Sonic
Integration
Renewed emphasis on thin client
Increased open client capabilities
Enhanced UI capabilities
UI Independence
Main Point(s): Moving forward we are focused on Productivity for service-oriented business applications. We are actively working in all 4 areas. Note the 10.1x—you’ll see these goals drive the next few releases. (Note to speaker—not everything available with 10.1A, eg. Core services phased in, enhanced integration with Sonic after 10.1A.
Supporting Points:
Productivity has to do with tools and basic platform capabilities. OpenEdge 10.1 will deliver on both counts.
The capabilities that we will concentrate on are those that make defining an application easier. This will include language enhancements and new core ‘service’ capabilities that simplify the development of common requirements across most applications.
The tools that we will deliver will all be based on a new IDE that will, over time, come to replace OpenEdge Studio. Both will continue to be offered until OpenEdge Studio is made redundant by the capabilities in the new platform.
In the UI area, we will be making small enhancements to our current GUI client. Most of these enhancements are designed either to give the UI a fresher look or to make it easier to build more advanced capabilities in the GUI.
Performance, performance, performance
Availability, scalability, reliability
Continued growth of SQL
Database

17. Core Services for Business Applications
Audit Policies Audit Data
Audit Archives
Audit Report Generator
Audit Policy Manager
Main Point:
There are a number of core services that almost every business application requires, and that almost every developer has had to code for themselves at least once! OpenEdge 10.1 will start the process of delivering these services in a manner that all of our partners can start using them to either simplify their own development or to add new application-wide features to their offerings.
Supporting Points:
OpenEdge 10.1A will deliver the first of these – auditing. Other core services will come in later releases.
Each of these services offer something that is commonly needed in an application, but has never come “in the box”.
These services are designed to either be designed into a new application or added to an existing application. Adding them in won’t be “free”, but it won’t require a complete re-work of the application either.
Auditing is a great place to start, as it is needed by everyone what with the increasing levels of regulation. It is also an area where home grown solutions tend to fall short in both coverage and in performance.
Note that this truly represents a new direction for the platform. We’ve always provided basic building blocks, but never more advanced, more complete services.
For partners familiar with Dynamics, this is the first example of us taking advantage of work done for Dynamics that is now being implemented for a wider community of applications. Note that this work is done at core level for greater flexibility and for greater performance.
Rich functionality
Highly extensible
Examples:
Auditing, Context Management, Security

18. Language Productivity – 4GL Object-Oriented Extensions
O-O concepts (inheritance, overriding, interfaces) to promote modularity and reuse
<<class>>
Business Entity
+ FetchWhere(Context, DataSet)
+ SaveChanges(DataSet)
<<interface>>
Customer
+ GetName(): char
Extends
Implements
<<class>> Partner
+ Discount (Rate,Amt):Decimal
+ GetName():char
Main Point:
With OpenEdge 10.1, we’ll be strengthening the object oriented aspects of the language. We don’t intend to convert the 4GL to complete object orientation, but we would like to give OpenEdge programmers the benefits of some aspects of object orientation. As such, we’ll be concentrating on the aspects that improve productivity and/or simplify syntax.
Supporting Points:
There are actually three languages currently in OpenEdge: The original static language, the dynamic language introduced in Progress 8, and certain aspects of an object language introduced primarily in progress 9.
We’re strengthening the object side as more application developers are creating reusable component logic. It fits well with OERA and the SOA strategy.
There are places where OO contributes to poor readability, poor performance, or complexity in development. We’ll not be introducing any of those aspects!
Strong typing
Supports interface with existing procedures
Method syntax

19. The New OpenEdge IDE
Simplifies Design, Development, Testing, and Deployment
Architecture-centric design center
Puts all tools within easy reach
Integrates many common tasks
Main Points:
With 10.1A, Progress will start the process of introducing a completely new IDE for developing applications. It will be compatible with the 4GL and the Progress database, and will work with most existing applications. It will not, in this release, be compatible with Dynamics, and it will have limited functionality with SmartObjects. The new IDE will be based on an industry standard platform, with a “plug-in” strategy that is common in the industry. It will significantly upgrade the look, feel, and behavior of our development environment.
As this is too big of project to be completed in a single release timeframe, OpenEdge Studio will continue to be offered (as will other development options), and there will be a level of interaction between the two products.
Progress is committed to providing an IDE which makes it easy to organize the development of an OpenEdge application and manage it through the entire application development lifecycle. The IDE will re-enforce the best practices and guidelines embodied by the OERA. Addressing architecture throughout the development process will deliver tremendous productivity increases and ensure that the end product is not only rapidly, but well constructed.
Supporting Points:
The new IDE is based on four parts: The basic editing system, a project management system, a set of tools for business logic, and a set of tools for user interface construction. The first release, delivered with OpenEdge Release 10.1, will concentrate of delivering all of the basic editing/compiling system, a first release of the project system, and the first of what will eventually become a complete set of business logic tools. The first release will not include a UI system, but will be compatible with UI work done in AppBuilder.
The new IDE will be based on an industry standard, open source platform. As such, we expect to see other compatible plug-ins being developed, either commercially or as open source, from our community and other sources. The goal is to make it easier for the community to take advantage of development lifecycle tools beyond those offered directly from Progress. Note that no decision has been made at this point concerning open source for the work done by Progress.
At first, this product will be offered as an complimenting alternative to AppBuilder and our other tools for constructing business logic. It will not have a visual drag-and-drop UI builder, but it can be used with AppBuilder for complete construction of an application. Pure business logic and code-defined UI capabilities will be fully supported. There will be interaction points between the two products. Our current goal is to have the new IDE and AppBuilder work in concert, thus preventing you from needing to physically move from one development environment to another. This means that while the AppBuilder will be used in the standard way, it will be accessible from within the new IDE.
It is important to emphasize that this new IDE will serve as a platform for a new type of tool never before used at Progress. We want to provide visual tools to help define, organize, and code business logic. Traditionally, this has been done only with an editor. Part of the reason for going in this direction is to move to a set of tools that define Architectural RAD – the ability to rapidly develop business logic that follows a predictable and appropriate architectural specification. For us, that architecture will be OERA.
Price, license, and packaging decisions on this product are not ready for public disclosure at this time.
Architectural RAD that supports the OpenEdge Reference Architecture

20. Business Application Challenge
…to make the transition from a long-lasting application to one that can change easily
Built to Change
Main Point:
There’s been a fundamental shift in what people believe about applications and how they are built. From one perspective, it looks like a big change. But when you look closer, it’s obvious that this is what we’ve been working towards for many years now. Where once applications where built to last a lifetime with few anticipated fundamental changes, now applications need to be designed from day one for constant change.
Supporting Points:
People need to move their thinking from “built to last” to “built to change”. This is a transition that every industry goes through at some point – now is the time in software applications.
Nobody likes taking out an application and putting in another one. It is disruptive, expensive, and time consuming. So the new mantra is to never change applications completely, but always change applications incrementally. This is better for you, the partner, and better for the end user.
The secret for “built to change” is in the architecture. Properly architected, an application can constantly change to the point where the end result over the years is a completely new application, but never all at once.
If your application is not architected to be “change friendly”, then the question is, how will you get to that point? What’s the roadmap and the timeframe?
Built to Last
…by being…

21. We simplify the job of creating the world’s best Service Oriented
Our Mission
Develop, Deploy, Integrate, Manage
We simplify the job of creating the world’s best Service Oriented
Business Applications.
Main Point:
This mission has been consistent for Progress and OpenEdge always. Technologies advance, requirements change, expectations grow, but the mission stays the same.
Supporting Points:
- With OpenEdge, we always support requirements for development, deployment, integration, and management.
We don’t create the applications; that’s the partner’s business. We make it easier to create and support those applications.
We’re focused completely on technologies and platforms designed for solving business problems.

22. Think OpenEdge
Think Sonic
Think SOA