Any Future in Progress???

[BCM]

joey.jeremiah -

"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."


No, Joey. The key is in the word 'resultset'. Only the final results are sent to the client. If the client's logic resulted in a few records, then that is all that is sent.

Truly, I am at a loss to argue with you people. This is like trying to argue between Islamic and Christianity being the true religion. However, the difference here is that we have facts and experience. Those of you who favor Progress do so because you are fairly small-time programmers simply interested in maintaining your income as small-time programmers. Those of us who turn from the darkside to the light, do so to empower organizations. We are confident in our ability to remain creative problem solvers even as we make obsolete the need for our past programming.

 

[rhi]

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

Are you aware that you can accomplish paraller processing with Oracle, on the SAME machine, provided there are at least 2 CPU's?

 

[rhi]

joey.jeremiah -

"Truly, I am at a loss to argue with you people. This is like trying to argue between Islamic and Christianity being the true religion. However, the difference here is that we have facts and experience. Those of you who favor Progress do so because you are fairly small-time programmers simply interested in maintaining your income as small-time programmers. Those of us who turn from the darkside to the light, do so to empower organizations.

Amen, BCM. I am also tired of running into the day-to-day frustrations of the limitations of Progress. I had said from the beginning, I think the 4GL language is strong, but the database absolutely stinks. Just recently, in our V9 environment, our database crashed due to a database extent filling up to the max OS size of 2GB (due to a bug in MFG/Pro eb2.1 patch that QAD sent us). Oracle would have just given me an errror, allowed me to expand the tablespace, and allowed the system to continue to run. I understand they fixed this on 10.1.

Years ago, before I knew oracle, I used to get angry & defensive about Progress when people put it down. Now that I know Oracle, I can see why they put it down. And I absolutely hate Progress, especially the database, because it literally makes my job harder than it has to be.

I will debate anyone point to point on the advantages of Oracle DB VS Progess, and you will lose.

 

[BCM]

And I absolutely hate Progress, especially the database, because it literally makes my job harder than it has to be.

Exactly my sentiments.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

well, without gramps here threatening to whip out his stick.

seems to me like he could have saved himself a few psychiatric bills by
getting a decent contractor.

he's the one turning this into a religious war, preaching about the "light".
me, i'd prefer a more agnostic approach.


rhi, with a distributed arch tasks can be executed in parallel even on a
single machine regardless of hardware configuration.

enablelargefiles was a version 9 inhancement, so it's been around for
atleast 5 years.

but you could have monitored / had a look at the bi file, say, once a year,
gotten a rough idea of average transaction activity etc. and added an extent.

figured out some developer needed a lesson on transaction scopes, or
adopted optimistic locking, and so on.


rhi, i think you're not making a point by counting individual database
features. it's like bringing up word indexes.

i would have been with you, if you'd have said that upto r10 there were
no 24/7 features like on-line schema changes and index rebuild etc.

i also think it's ridicolous saying progress would compete with oracle on database
features, purely. for one it's a development platform, not soley a database.

 

[rhi]

well, without gramps here threatening to whip out his stick.

seems to me like he could have saved himself a few psychiatric bills by
getting a decent contractor.

he's the one turning this into a religious war, preaching about the "light".
me, i'd prefer a more agnostic approach.

Joey, the religous statement was an analogy. I don't think he's turning this into a religous war.

rhi, with a distributed arch tasks can be executed in parallel even on a single machine regardless of hardware configuration.

The term "Distributed Architecture" infers more than one machine is involved, so your statement makes no sense. Besides. I was just responding to your statement - "you can distribute the work over multiple machines and execute tasks in parallel."

The only way you can perform parallel tasks on a single machine with Progress, is to actually start 2 client processes to accomplish a single task. With Oracle, a single process can perform parallel tasks.

enablelargefiles was a version 9 inhancement, so it's been around for atleast 5 years. but you could have monitored / had a look at the bi file, say, once a year, gotten a rough idea of average transaction activity etc. and added an extent. figured out some developer needed a lesson on transaction scopes, or adopted optimistic locking, and so on.

All database/BI storage & performance statistics are monitored daily via scripts & programs and are automatically emailed to me 1st thing every morning. This problem occurred due to a faulty patch, as I mentioned, and grew the file 2 gig within a couple of hours, resulting in the crash that I mentioned. Your mention of "enablelargefiles" suggests that I should have done this, added a whole bunch of extents, and made the database sooooo big that it can accomodate such unreasonable growth, and thereby avoiding the crash. I have news for you - that is not the way to manage a database, and anyone who does that should be fired. The proper way is to monitor daily, as I do, and when a problem occurs, hope that you are running on a QUALITY database platform such as Oracle, that will allow the DBA to rectify the problem without interrupting daily business transactions.

rhi, i think you're not making a point by counting individual database features. it's like bringing up word indexes.
i would have been with you, if you'd have said that upto r10 there were
no 24/7 features like on-line schema changes and index rebuild etc.
i also think it's ridicolous saying progress would compete with oracle on database features, purely.

Try telling any IT director in charge of mission critical apps, which need to be running 24/7, that database features are not important, especially when those features can avoid database crashes, which cost companies money. Besides, there are many levels at which Progress can not compete with Oracle, such as performance.

for one it's a development platform, not soley a database.

Wrong again. The progress client is sold & licensed seperately from the database. You can run Progress 4gl against Oracle or SQL Server - both of which are much better databases than Progress.

Using a Progress database is like driving a stick-shift car in handcuffs. It can be done, but at some point you are probably going to crash because you don't have much control.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

Joey, the religous statement was an analogy. I don't think he's turning this into a religous war.

it kinda is.

All database/BI storage & performance statistics are monitored daily via scripts & programs and are automatically emailed to me 1st thing every morning. This problem occurred due to a faulty patch, as I mentioned, and grew the file 2 gig within a couple of hours, resulting in the crash that I mentioned. Your mention of "enablelargefiles" suggests that I should have done this, added a whole bunch of extents, and made the database sooooo big that it can accomodate such unreasonable growth, and thereby avoiding the crash. I have news for you - that is not the way to manage a database, and anyone who does that should be fired. The proper way is to monitor daily, as I do, and when a problem occurs, hope that you are running on a QUALITY database platform such as Oracle, that will allow the DBA to rectify the problem without interrupting daily business transactions.

wow, i've never seen a progress database so heavily monitored. make sense to use fathom, monitor trends, warnings, alerts etc. thru the web. there was talk for a while that fathom would replace explorer but that didn't go thru.

unlike oracle it doesn't install with a dba. full time progress dba's are pretty rare. i know of a case where the server was dry walled over because no one had to actually go there.

Try telling any IT director in charge of mission critical apps, which need to be running 24/7, that database features are not important, especially when those features can avoid database crashes, which cost companies money.

that's what i'm talking about. you could make a point if you'd argue a business point. not copy pasting the features from a brochure. and that's how you have to look at it. it was designed and shaped for certain business uses, not for going after oracle.

Besides, there are many levels at which Progress can not compete with Oracle, such as performance.

what is this major performance handicap you keep mentioning. you should be able to scratch the 100,000 lines per second queries even with modest hardware configurations. as a rule of thumb i would never accept any report/query running over a couple or so minutes.

you're not really using remote connections are you ? it's also pretty simple for a developer to screw up an application regardless of the database.

Wrong again. The progress client is sold & licensed seperately from the database. You can run Progress 4gl against Oracle or SQL Server - both of which are much better databases than Progress.

now you're reaching. i doubt the database is bought to be used by some thing other then 4gl/abl, pretty rare. it's still mostly used for some level of interoperability. progress is a development platform etc. not only a database.

wow, i've got tons of horror stories about sql server, crashes, page/block level locks ?! and so on. funny a friend of mine works at microsoft, though he's a linux guy at heart.

but why would anyone use any other database other then oracle. maybe not every shop needs or can afford these enterprise level features.

Using a Progress database is like driving a stick-shift car in handcuffs. It can be done, but at some point you are probably going to crash because you don't have much control.

here's another one, "ak-47 vs m-16"

none of this space age materials, just rrrrrrussian steel and wood. it may not be as accurate or lightweight. but it doesn't need to be constantly cleaned and won't jam on you either. you can throw it in the mud swim with it and it'll keep kicking ***, arrrrrrr

you can count on both hands every time i've ever had a progress database crash on me, and none of them had a full time dba. one was due to the cleaning lady getting adventures and most others are os and hardware related. i've got a few crazy stories

but hey, like i've said before if you're looking for a serious discussion with java, .net, oracle and other database professionals, contractors, ap's, progress executives, academias etc. go to PEG !

i haven't even graduated yet. but i'm not exactly a college kid either, i've served for few years prior to entering university, unlike rambo over here.

 

[Lee Curzon]

No offense taken. It is quite typical for a developer to blame the DBA.

I was rude, sorry. I was antagonised by your assumption that the problem was necessarily down to Progress, not the Application or the Configuration, which reeked a little of a workman blaming his tools.

I wonder if your dislike of Progress is blinding you to the fact that the problems you are having may not be primarily down to the Progress product.

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.

True (or it may be the way the application is administered), but these bugs have fixes and workarounds which are the responsibility of the DBA and the Developer (however irritating it may be that they exist in the first place). If you are needing to reboot your server regularly, there is much more likely to be something wrong with the app or the deployment than the Progress software.

Try dba@peg.com, and Progress Tech Support if you haven't already.

Sounds like you really don't know about development agains Oracle databases

I don't know much, but I did enough to realise Oracle is a DBA's thing, not a programmer's. It came third on my list of options after MS and Progress. I am not disputing your point that if I was a DBA it would come well above Progress - but as I said, I'm a programmer, so Progress naturally comes first.

It is well known, Progress only works with Progress, unless you like developing against an ODBC source.

Pre v10, this was true, but it wasn't a major limitation for Windows (front end) programmers - the Progress front end is pretty straightforward for developing Client interfaces, including the whole OCX thing. And it has the 4GL, which is the whole point for me - it is comparatively easy to develop and deploy a medium-sized app in Progress.

 

[Lee Curzon]

Truly, I am at a loss to argue with you people. This is like trying to argue between Islamic and Christianity being the true religion. However, the difference here is that we have facts and experience. Those of you who favor Progress do so because you are fairly small-time programmers simply interested in maintaining your income as small-time programmers.

Big-time (I assume that is what the 'B' stands for - as this is a family forum, I won't conjecture on the 'C' and 'M'), I just want to thank you for stepping into our little forum, and showing us the way.

If you had read other threads in this forum, you would realise that as sensible programmers with our eyes on the future, (generally) we take Progress with a pinch of salt, and realise its not the be-all and end-all. Certainly, if protecting my income was all there was to it, I would have moved to MS technologies a long time ago. But I actually like programming in Progress, and as long as the job opportunities aren't too scarce, I'll be sticking with it in the medium term.

Those of us who turn from the darkside to the light, do so to empower organizations. We are confident in our ability to remain creative problem solvers even as we make obsolete the need for our past programming.

Do you actually talk like this in real life?

Let me state that I am willing to meet you people and fight this to the end.

With all the crap going on in the world, don't you think you're taking this a leeeedle bit too seriously?

 

[jkrendal]

If Progress would become half as popular I would already be surprised.....
(But ok, I must admit I lost my glass ball a while ago )

I just came back from a PUG meeting and one thing Progress told was that they're going to invest more in education (like university programs) so anyone who does computer sciences at least heard from Progress (and perhaps starts liking it )
I think thats one step in the right direction.

Casper

Progress does not get it. Its like they are stuck in some IBMesque 1970's limbo. Educational programs are nice but they wont expose Progress the way it needs to be.

First off, Progress is a great DB. Is it perfect? No. But its a good db. Unfortunaltly it has a lot that is keeping it behind. Combine that with its horrid exposure and its not suprising folks worry. Now my comments are more oriented toward the US market where Progress usually gets the "huh what is Progress response?". It seems progress is more common in Europe etc.

So what has contributed to Progress lack of exposure?

Unlike most every other major DB company, Progress provides no free limited version of their DB. This is huge. Its not 1970 Gus. MS, IBM etc all offer feely available trial or limited versions of their DB available for download and distribution on the web. This is beneficial for exposure and beneficial for developers who work on Progress.

Progress is seriously lacking support for easy integration with third party applications, hardware etc. Want a source control app. There is one. Want a job control app, their is one etc. Progress is slowly trying to improve this in version 10 by offering things like Eclipse support. But in usual Progress fashion, Is it ever made clear in their documentation or online resources how to implement or utilize these features?

Progress needs to offer more solutions for building web based applications on Progress. Webspeed is nice, but its expensive, its licensing structure is laughable (how do you come up with a finite number for the users connecting to a public website lol). Users would want options to utilize .net, php, jsp solutions that run on top of a progress db. And if it can be done dont be so damn discreet about it. Also, like the db, a free limited version of webspeed should be made publicly available. Heck you want instant exposure? Make a free version of progress and webspeed available and you'll see more marketing exposure than anything Progress has done since its inception. You have a free version and you have the enterprise commercial version.

Books? What books. How infuriating it must be for some poor sap who just migrated from a job working on MS SQL, Oracle, DB2, Sybase etc. to a Progress job only to find their is next to nothing available about programming on Progress or any of its sister applications in the bookstore or online. In fact, other than the PEG this website is about it.

I could go on but there is no reason. Progress can grow and get more exposure, but not with the current business model. They need some fresh blood on the board.

 

[vinhtq]

I have a small team ( 10 people) with 2 years expereince with 4GL.
We will available for your project after 2 weeks later.
We really need a new 4gl project for keeping resource.
Any body know how to find Progress customer in the world ?

Thanks a lots.

 

[eMe]

hi!

i've been skimming through this thread but i've seen that this post are from, more than one year ago. i'm starting with progress and i have noticed what you mencione around here, principally, it's lack of exposure...

i'm trying to reactivate this post to see again your opinions about the Progress future, well, to see if Progress has made any advanced or still quite stuck (sttoped?)

 

[tamhas]

Do us all a favor and start a new thread with some specific questions. Navigating a thread nested this deep is a pain.

And, yes, PSC has been doing a lot in recent years.

 

[KnutHandsome]

Do us all a favor and start a new thread with some specific questions. Navigating a thread nested this deep is a pain.

A typically warm, welcoming response from the cheerful Doctor.

i'm starting with progress and i have noticed what you mencione around here, principally, it's lack of exposure...

i'm trying to reactivate this post to see again your opinions about the Progress future, well, to see if Progress has made any advanced or still quite stuck (sttoped?)

Hi eMe, welcome to Progress and the forum.

Progress is still quite stuck. As far as I can see by looking at the job sites, nothing much has changed in terms of prospects, though as Tamhas says, Progress (the core technology) continues to evolve.

If I was starting over, and was looking at things solely in terms of career prospects, I'd go with one of the big 2 (Oracle/MS SQL), or maybe take a punt on SAP, as that pays well. But don't forget that to concentrate solely on one technology is not terribly wise, although you should specialise. Business and paradigm experience is also important.

But as well as career, you should also think about whether you will enjoy using the technology, and personally I like the 4GL (although c#/Linq is starting to look a bit intersting).

The problem for us ABL programmers is that companies have to respond to the fears of the market, and the "nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM" adage still holds true, regardless of our belief in the power of the 4GL.

Size matters.

 

[cet413]

Progress works fine but the fact of the matter is that it's not widely used and probably never will be. I want to be marketable which I'm not and am fearful that I coded myself into a corner by using Progress We've converted the front end of our app. to C# .Net and hopefully the db will follow shortly. I'm testing converting the db(s) now using a product called SQLWays by Inspirer.com. I'm doing conversion testing with both Oracle and Microsoft SQL 2005 to decide. For me the companies financials listed below speak volumes.....

As of 12/24/07

Company Market Cap.
Progress 1.2 Billion
Sybase 2.37 Billion
Oracle 116.91 Billion
Microsoft 342.22 Billion

 

[joey.jeremiah]

Famous last words

I think we've all said something like that plenty of times.


Maybe it doesn't have to be an all or nothing deal.

I also do web and PHP work these days and advanced UI's like Flex and some other stuff.

But I also have plenty of Progress business.

 

[tamhas]

Market success of the company <> size of market for developers <> quality of product <> availability of interesting jobs <> high paying jobs, etc.

Way back when I was still an academic, I was considered a biological anthropologist. Outside of the CIA and a few industry jobs, virtually all jobs for Ph.D. biological anthropologists were in universities. It was a small market, but as it happened at the time, there tended to be something like twice as many job openings any given year as there were people looking for them, which would seem to make it a real seller's market. However, people were never looking for just undifferentiated biological anthropologists. Instead, they were looking for someone doing primates or fossil man or genetics or population genetics or osteology or forensics or whatever. Within each specialty, there would tend to be severe mismatches where in one area there might be 3 or even 5 times as many open positions as there were people qualified for that area, but in others, there might be 2 or 3 times as many people looking as there were slots. And, I was the odd man out in any case. While I could easily teach primates and fossil man, neither was my area of special expertise ... that was theory and methods, i.e., computer and math stuff. No one ever went looking for one of those.

Bottom line, it is who you are and what skills you bring to bear in relationship to the current demands of the market. I would hate to be a plain vanilla Java programmer with no special skills or background looking for a job because there would be thousands and thousands of people in the same category ... lots of jobs, but even more people looking for them. But, develop a particular area of skill and expertise which is currently hot and you can find yourself with many more jobs than people ... even in ABL.

 

[wsong]

Market success of the company <> size of market for developers <> quality of product <> availability of interesting jobs <> high paying jobs, etc.

Way back when I was still an academic, I was considered a biological anthropologist. Outside of the CIA and a few industry jobs, virtually all jobs for Ph.D. biological anthropologists were in universities. It was a small market, but as it happened at the time, there tended to be something like twice as many job openings any given year as there were people looking for them, which would seem to make it a real seller's market. However, people were never looking for just undifferentiated biological anthropologists. Instead, they were looking for someone doing primates or fossil man or genetics or population genetics or osteology or forensics or whatever. Within each specialty, there would tend to be severe mismatches where in one area there might be 3 or even 5 times as many open positions as there were people qualified for that area, but in others, there might be 2 or 3 times as many people looking as there were slots. And, I was the odd man out in any case. While I could easily teach primates and fossil man, neither was my area of special expertise ... that was theory and methods, i.e., computer and math stuff. No one ever went looking for one of those.

Bottom line, it is who you are and what skills you bring to bear in relationship to the current demands of the market. I would hate to be a plain vanilla Java programmer with no special skills or background looking for a job because there would be thousands and thousands of people in the same category ... lots of jobs, but even more people looking for them. But, develop a particular area of skill and expertise which is currently hot and you can find yourself with many more jobs than people ... even in ABL.

These days, COBOL and ABAP guys are making stable and good money. They are not fancy, they are so clumsy and stupid by Java guy's standard. A huge lot of applications are written by COBOL ABAP and Progress.

I strongly believe that complex business Logic on Java or C# is stupid direction.

I believe no bank dares to run their transaction system on Java or .Net.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

i've been hearing the phrase "java is the new cobol"

for the past year or so and not from microsoft and the likes.


heres a recent one -

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/12/28/52FE-underreported-java_1.html


seems like java isn't hot as it used to be and lots of shops are opting for ruby and php these days.