Any Future in Progress???

[tslmba]

Progress in the open

We all know that progress is a supeior product with inferior marketing. The whole buisness model the company has been retarding growth for years. This is why progress lags. Granted there are fewer programmers, but that is because there are fewer places to get employed. I loved progress. I just think it is a great product wasted by inferior managers.

I interviewed for a progress position about 2 years ago. I could not understand the guy on the other end of the phone. His accent and horrible english made that impossible. Let alone the ability for us to percieve the concepts of one another. That is a problem with progress today. They are progressing to a exclusivity brought about by language barriers. Progress will eventually be unable to communicate with the American manager. This and the fact that an american manager will be able to communicate with a programmer.

This may all sound racist to those pc people, but I don't care go jump a bike or something. The truth is that logic is a reflection of the language we use everyday. The way we put thoughts together is reflected in this manner. Just as a computer language restricts the way we can program, so to does our lingustics restrict the way we can percieve and communicate ideas.

In order for progress to progress. The company needs to ensure that sample bases and plentifle documentation reach the books shelfs of stores like barns and noble. They need to work with states and colleges and practically give the system away. After all it does cost less to maintain, and this could be a big sales pitch. The barrier of course is the rollover. Since there are not enough progress people in America it would be a tough sell. Not many officials will be glad to hand over public systems to foriegn engineers to get a data system that Americans know how manage.

Also progress acts like it's oracle. Well it is not. Yes the system is better but Oracle is the recognized leader. Progress should cut the cost for training american engineers so there will be plenty of us waiting to jump in and help the states and college systems.

California Colleges are still a mess. Washinton has a great system in place. Progress should start there.

My rant...

Thanks

 

[leite1969]

Envio E-Mail Progress x Outlook 2003

Caros colegas,

Alguém conseguiu solução para a mensagem que o Outlook 2003 mostra quando utilizamos o Progress para envio de e-mail:

"A program is trying to automatically send e-mail on your behalf.
Do you want to allow this?
If this is unexpected, it may be a virus and you should choose "No"."

Existe alguma comando ou função que consiga desabilitar esta função do Outlook 2003 para não mostrar esta mensagem, temos momentos de envio de e-mail automático onde não existe um usuário para clicar no botão Sim.

Grato pela ajuda,


Eduardo Leite
Analista de Sistema
+55 31 9113.8726

 

[binggoy]

ahhh yes.. indeed PROGRESS is a great product.. makes one wonder why it's not on top of its category as it should be?? Marketing.. true one of the main reasons.. what is Progress, the comany, doing about this?? not much hehehehe.. to tell you the truth I am also thinking about .. maybe shiftting to a new career?? a new programming language perhaps?? but I still love using progress.. let's admit it.. it's easier to use .. no need for this and that in order to RUN a program.. Currently we don't have any projects involving progress.. and man it is freaking me out.. what if there are no projects that can be inked? what will become of me?? a workless guy that only has progress programming abilities to show?? so should I start posting my resume? maybe surf progresstalk for job opportunities?? I just hope one of the marketing officials of progress would be willing to shake things up.. hopefully

 

[rhi]

I don't know how many people on this thread have extensive knowledge about both Progress & Oracle. I have 12 years exp. as a Progress developer/DBA, and 7 years as an Oracle DBA. I will admit the Progress 4GL language is superior to SQLPlus & PL/SQL, but the Progress DBMS is no match for the Oracle RDBMS. Notice I did not say 'Progress "R"DBMS', because it is not a "relational" database.

See Codd's rules #0, #4 & #10 http://www.databaseanswers.org/codds_rules.htm

I saw a reference in this thread that in Progress 10.1A you can now add things to the database online such as fields & extents. Guess what, Oracle was doing that in version 7, as far as I know, maybe earlier.

I'll give you 10 quick features of Oracle 10g, that I seriously doubt that we will even see by the time Progress gets to version 15.

1) database reorgs online (the equivelent of a dump & load online)
2) Database level, Table level, row level or transaction level rewind. (not rollback - you can literally rewind the database, without restoring from backup.)
3) Oracle has a Recycle Bin. You can reclaim objects that are dropped, etc.
4) Resource Management (CPU, Disk I/O, etc), which still can not be done in Progress
5) SQL Tuning advisor (when was the last time a Progress database told you how to fix your code)
6) Almost all Administration is done via the web based database console (free with the database license - and NO, Oracle is NOT more expensive than Progress anymore)
7) The database has a job scheduler (a replacement for CRON), including job chaining
8) You can designate which tables you might want to cache in memory upon database startup
9) Last I checked, Progress has 57 database parameters for configuration and performance, 7 of which are dynamic. Oracle has 256 such paramaters, of which 146 are dynamic.
10) Automatic Storage Management

There is not a single thing that the Progress DB can do that Oracle can not do. The Oracle DB is better than the Progress DB because it has far better & more advanced features, and much, much faster. The opposite will NEVER be true, for one reason.

- Progress' 2004 annual R&D budget approx. $60 million
- Oracle's 2004 annual R&D budget approx $1.5 billion

For anyone who wants educate themselves about the 100's of things that Oracle can do, which Progress can not: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/oracle10g/index.html

 

[joey.jeremiah]

wow, that's an old long academic discussion

with most rdbms, not that it even matters


you can't look at the database market as one single market

progress aims to be the best in their market space, embedded databases


the progress platform is mainly, a business app language

that comes with a rock solid, hands off database


oracle is about 50 times bigger then progress.

you can find lots of oracle and java gurus @peg.com

and long discussions about the progress and oracle databases

 

[Lee Curzon]

I don't know how many people on this thread have extensive knowledge about both Progress & Oracle. I have 12 years exp. as a Progress developer/DBA, and 7 years as an Oracle DBA. I will admit the Progress 4GL language is superior to SQLPlus & PL/SQL, but the Progress DBMS is no match for the Oracle RDBMS. <clip>

Thanks for that summary. It made a useful change from the normal 'Progress is rubbish because my mates have never heard of it' diatribe we tend to get round here.

Your 'my R&D budget is bigger than your R&D budget' argument may have some force, but applied universally, big companies must always then produce better software than smaller ones, which just isn't true - the smaller you are, the less generic you have to be, and you can make your products a little more 'interesting'.

You also have to bear in mind that most Progress technical users are programmers, not DBAs, and it is important to weigh the ease of access to programmers accordingly - there is nothing I've seen in the Oracle or Microsoft worlds that competes with the direct, easy access that programmers have to the data in Progress. As a programmer, the thing above all that keeps me interested in Progress, is the hoops I would have to jump through to loop through a set of records and update them according to a per-record criterion if I jumped ship.

But your point that Oracle is more powerful as a DBA's database is taken - but I'm a programmer, and there are other things to think about for me...

 

[Lee Curzon]

progress aims to be the best in their market space, embedded databases

Ah, the old 'embedded database' chestnut. I've never quite understood this - embedded in what? The server?

Perhaps it means 'embedded in the application'? Like Access? Do we really want the follow-on Mickey Mouse connotations on our CVs?

Maybe it just means you buy the database with the software - I don't see how that's a great technical selling point.

As you can probably tell, I'm unconvinced by the 'leader in the embedded database market' argument. Exactly who else of consequence is in this market? Are you sure it's not just a marketing term invented by Progress when they knew they'd lost the database wars, in which case Progress is the 'leader in the Progress database market'?

Now, if they mean it in the same way as 'embedded system', then again, I'm confused - we all know that we are supposed to be separating components out these days, the exceptions being things like PDAs, phones, and washing machines.

Progress doesn't run on handheld devices, and I've yet to see a washing machine deployment...

 

[Casper]

Progress doesn't run on handheld devices, and I've yet to see a washing machine deployment...

lol:
find first/last failed for table detergent. (565)

 

[Lee Curzon]

I have just finished a Progress Data Cleaning project.

 

[wsong]

Nothing will last forever

let's C how well progress is doing in the Age of SOA. This is the last chance for progress to survive in the database market.

With SOA, no need to use progress as the front-end devlopment tool, I think most existing progress based application vendor will use .net/java for front-end devlopment. while progress taking care of the business logic and database access and data storage. Contrast to SAP and Oracle's own SOA solution, progress based application vendor will spend much less on the transition to SOA, as the SOA structure will be provided by progress. Progress can only survive on its customer's success.

Cheers

Willy Song

7 years Mfg/Pro consultant
3 years SAP consultant

 

[BCM]

rhi -
Amen! I, too, am an Oracle dba, and, also, work extensively with SQL Server. From a data management perspective Progress is primitive. Progress developers think it's cool that Progress uses variable length data fields which can get ugly when sloppy programmers throw together an application and forget to provide control over data length.

Most significant is the 'island unto itself' that Progress occupies. Progress does not interface well with Windows based systems and relational databases. The fact that Progress version 10 is finally adding much needed SQL support is a case of too little, too late. And what about that slick Progress Procedure Editor? Didn't character-based displays become obsolete around 1990? Further, Progress programs do not seem to behave well on Windows when it comes to timeslicing the available resources.

 

[rhi]

I'm glad so hear people who have knowledge of both Progess & Oracle stepping up and saying what is a fact. True about Progress on Windows - we have a Progress App on a windows sever, and we have it scheduled to re-boot once a week. sometimes that is not even enough. And yeah, we have Progress running on Unix, in character, on QAD's latest & greatest version of MFG/PRO, because no one can develop a decent GUI front end for Progress

For all of you touting Progress in the 'embedded' world, Oracle is coming after that market now also, with it's aquisitions. Maybe we'll all get lucky and see Oracle buy Progress as well, and clean that company up, since Progress can't seem to do it themselves.

 

[lord_icon]

Greetings,
The question should read, "Any future NOT in Progress", now Progress OpenEdge. The Progress tool is brilliant. 1 attribute is the brilliant db, comparable with Oracle though arguably better THEN there is the 4GL. This is PSC's advantage over Oracle. The dbs are comparable with each other, though Oracle uses scripts for db interrigation. OpenEdge has a 4GL, that can develop UI's to partner the db. Saving having to ODBC..., everything can be achieved with the single Progress OpenEdge product who needs more?? The Smart Object concept now using ADM2 is excellent, it makes application development able to follow a standard behaviour. Progress for tomorrow, today. Purchase a Progress OpenEdge 10 license, and see how business application development should be done.

 

[Lee Curzon]

And yeah, we have Progress running on Unix, in character, on QAD's latest & greatest version of MFG/PRO, because no one can develop a decent GUI front end for Progress

I don't know much about MFG/PRO, but I know it is a big player in the Progress world, perhaps it is suffering from the same Monolithic Mania you advocate for Oracle.

Anyone who can program on Windows can develop a decent Client front end for Progress, particularly in OE10, which allows full front end development in .Net technologies, while data services are deployed on unix.

Incidentally, last time I used Oracles inbuilt products to develop a front end (V8/9), they seemed very primitive - has this improved?

True about Progress on Windows - we have a Progress App on a windows sever, and we have it scheduled to re-boot once a week. sometimes that is not even enough.

Perhaps a new DBA is in order? (No offence).

 

[joey.jeremiah]

i think some, or alot of us are somewhat conflicted about progress. there's nothing i'd hope more than progress success but there are alot of things that drive me nuts about progress.

it's not that it isn't a valid topic, imho it's a very important one. but bcm's threads usually start off "hello, you ****ing idiots ...". more like a support group, every time a developer screws something up he comes in to unload

don't get me wrong i would kill to have your experience. it's just that it usually won't get the response you're looking for. i personally had lengthy discussions on the subjects with a few progress old skooler's

hey, i think we've stumbled on new phrase "progress survivor". it's something i can empathies with at times

 

[rhi]

1 attribute is the brilliant db, comparable with Oracle though arguably better THEN there is the 4GL. This is PSC's advantage over Oracle. The dbs are comparable with each other, though Oracle uses scripts for db interrigation.

This is one of the most frustrating things that I see over & over again. Stating that the Progress DB & Oracle DB are comparable proves that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

I am reposting what I posted earlier. Apparently you missed it. After reading this, tell me you still believe the DBs are comparable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll give you 10 quick features of Oracle 10g, that I seriously doubt that we will even see by the time Progress gets to version 15.

1) database reorgs online (the equivelent of a dump & load online)
2) Database level, Table level, row level or transaction level rewind. (not rollback - you can literally rewind the database, without restoring from backup.)
3) Oracle has a Recycle Bin. You can reclaim objects that are dropped, etc.
4) Resource Management (CPU, Disk I/O, etc), which still can not be done in Progress
5) SQL Tuning advisor (when was the last time a Progress database told you how to fix your code)
6) Almost all Administration is done via the web based database console (free with the database license - and NO, Oracle is NOT more expensive than Progress anymore)
7) The database has a job scheduler (a replacement for CRON), including job chaining
8) You can designate which tables you might want to cache in memory upon database startup
9) Last I checked, Progress has 57 database parameters for configuration and performance, 7 of which are dynamic. Oracle has 256 such paramaters, of which 146 are dynamic.
10) Automatic Storage Management

 

[BCM]

Front ends will come and go. A well-thought data model built on a robust database will last 1-2 decades. The worst aspect of Progress is the database. Progress is like dBase on steroids. Progress does not work well with matrices of data, performing operations on sets of respective cells. Frankly, I don't give a damn if version 10.x is catching-up to the rest of the database management world. With SQL based database systems I can outperform Progress because I can instruct the database to do work in parallel, whereas, Progress is best utilized in a serial paradigm.

 

[rhi]

Anyone who can program on Windows can develop a decent Client front end for Progress, particularly in OE10, which allows full front end development in .Net technologies, while data services are deployed on unix.

Last I knew, Progress has horrible performance problems over a WAN. Has that changed with .net?

Incidentally, last time I used Oracles inbuilt products to develop a front end (V8/9), they seemed very primitive - has this improved?

There are countless ways to develop an app against an Oracle database, using both Oracle's development tools and third party app dev. tools, unlike Progress. It is well known, Progress only works with Progress, unless you like developing against an ODBC source. Sounds like you really don't know about development agains Oracle databases

Perhaps a new DBA is in order? (No offence).

No offense taken. It is quite typical for a developer to blame the DBA. When I hear that, I know it is your last line of defense, and I think to myself " I was right, he doesn't know what he is doing"

It's quite common knowledge that the _mprosrv.exe & java.exe processes hang and/or sometime consume 100% of a servers CPU. It may be how the application was designed, or the progress product itself. Never the less, it is what happens.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

Last I knew, Progress has horrible performance problems over a WAN. Has that changed with .net?

yep. in a nutshell the client translates joins into multiple single table queries and every nested query generates atleast a single message for every row of the parent's query, with an average roundtrip of 1ms over a lan, and maybe 50ms over a wan !

for example: for each orderline no-lock, each item of orderline no-lock:
simple math, if there are 13,000 orderline and 10 item records works out to an additional 13sec over a lan and just under 11min on a wan, oh, and ~100ms on a self-serving connection.

on the other hand a self-serving connection is ideal. now that's native connection! typically with sql, the server generates the entire resultset sends it over the wire, generates it on the other side, and the client finally process it. besides, less control over the query, strong binding etc.

progress, probably, never will send a single query and receive one big resultset. because it was designed primarily with navigation in mind. a good comparison to progress queries is how other languages work with local arrays.

i agree on r-tree indices, and other database features not included in the 4gl. but i also doubt progress intends to compete nose to nose with oracle purely on database capabilities. though i've yet to hear from anyone including the guys who work at progress on peg a simple, clear explanation on what are their plans.

let's see how progress fits in the web 2.0 world, maybe it'll be a repeat of the happy chui days. progress does have some presence in the soa arena.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

oh, btw, with a distributed architecture, you can distribute the work over multiple machines and execute tasks in parallel.