Guidance on licensing for a small application

NeilM

New Member
Good afternoon,

I have little experience with licensing, however necessity requires it of me.

I have been looking after a CHUI database/application running on a windows server with < 10 users, running progress 8.3 and I am now in a position to address the version of progress. I appreciate that there is no path from 8.3 to 11.7, so will be a simple dump and reload of the data.

My goal is to move the client to 11.7.xx and open up the database with some form of restful API (Use of PAS I assume).

Given that has a significant time has passed since the days of 8.3, then I can assume that licensing has changed since that point in time.

So working with that information:-

1. Any rough idea on the cost of a workgroup server, for 8. Rough numbers.
2. Do we still have concurrent users?
3. Would the PAS server require a license for running the API?
4. What things should I be considering, any other costs that I should be aware of?
5. Any resources I should know about?
6. Maintenance costs. %?

I would assume that the rental of the development license for a workgroup server, at say £25 a month would suffice. Since I tend to use Visual Studio Code for editing code and only require a progress session to run / compile / manage database etc.

As I said, any advice would be welcomed.
 

Rob Fitzpatrick

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
I can't answer all your questions but I'll offer my opinions. (Licensing facts are hard to come by. Unfortunately,even within PSC, different people sometimes have different ideas of how applications should be licensed.)

I can't give you UK pricing; maybe someone else can.

The Concurrent User license model is no more, for new purchases at least. It is grandfathered for clients who are already on UBP (Concurrent) licenses, but I think v9 was the last release where it was available for new purchases. Also, in my experience, UBP tended to be more expensive overall for my customers than NBP (Named User model). One very nice aspect of NBP is that it is a multi-server license type, unlike UBP and AAP. So it can be used across environments and machines, e.g. UAT, prod, and DR.

Note also that your application may require a mix of products and they won't necessarily all be on the same license model. It depends on your application clients and who uses them and how. For example, my application may be deployed with a variety of different types of application clients: a GUI for desktop users, Classic App Servers for published web services, PASOE for API clients, batch character clients for reporting, etc. I will typically buy NBP licenses for Enterprise RDBMS (database) and Client Networking (GUI and batch clients), and then for WS and API clients, AAP (Access Agent model) licenses for some number of App Server or PASOE users and a corresponding "paper" license for RDBMS. (It's informally called a paper license because it's never installed anywhere; it's just purchased for compliance.)

The PAS instance requires licensing for the front end (Prod PASOE) and the back end RDBMS (Workgroup in your case), with the same user count and model. You would likely also want a PASOE license for development, though I'd actually recommend using Prod PASOE in dev rather than Dev PASOE. The two licenses have different capabilities and defaults, and using a Prod license in dev will give you a better assurance that your security configuration is correct, as well as better lending itself to a CI/CD pipeline, if that's important to you.

You'll need some kind of development tool license to build r-code. Since you don't need the PDSOE IDE, you can buy a one-user 4GL Development System license for that purpose.

If you have an up-to-date maintenance contract, then you should still be able to get some trade-in value for the old v8 licenses to acquire the v11 licenses you need, depending on which products you already have. It's worth inquiring about.

Maintenance has a few different tiers (Limited, Standard, and Enterprise, from memory). Maintenance contracts are annual and costs are a percentage of the licensing cost. I think Standard maintenance is 22% of list, but I don't have the price list in front of me to confirm.

Hope this helps!
 

Bounty

New Member
When you are coming from such an old version I would research other options like moving away from Progress entirely.
For REST services you have to write code anyway and nowadays there are a lot of other tools.
The database can be migrated to PostgreSQL, MySQL, ...
 

NeilM

New Member
When you are coming from such an old version I would research other options like moving away from Progress entirely.
For REST services you have to write code anyway and nowadays there are a lot of other tools.
The database can be migrated to PostgreSQL, MySQL, ...

So I have considered a migration, but the fact is the system works well and is very reliable, and to the client that is key. It looks it's age, but don't they all after this much time. However it is very effective for getting the data in.

The REST services will be small extension of functionality for the moment, and would more an opportunity to get more usage from their data, allowing new non key functionality/infrastructure to be tested.

If there was a requirement to access the data by phone, tablet, external to the office/factory, then it would require a rethink. Probably mirroring the data to another database, and building out in a controlled manner.

To be fair Progress has worked well for manner years and that is not to be scoffed at.
 
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NeilM

New Member
I can't answer all your questions but I'll offer my opinions. (Licensing facts are hard to come by. Unfortunately,even within PSC, different people sometimes have different ideas of how applications should be licensed.)

I can't give you UK pricing; maybe someone else can.
............

Hope this helps!

First of all, thank you.

That will need a few reads. Licensing is a dark art, up their with networking :)

Question(s).

1. How does the Named in NBP actually work?
 
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Rob Fitzpatrick

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
How does the Named in NBP actually work?
The Named User license model can be used when the user is defined as a Standard User or an Occasional User. This means we know who the users are and they use an OpenEdge application to perform their job function. The difference between Standard and Occasional is basically how much they do that.

You said you have about a 10-user system. That means to me that there is a small, finite number of known people accessing the application. It sounds like NBP would be a good fit for them. The name of this model sometimes puts people off, as they think they have to constantly maintain a list of people's names, and they anticipate extra work as staff come and go. You don't have to do that. It is a matter of knowing your head count of people who have access to the application, and being able to produce that list if required.

If this company also had, say, an e-commerce site powered by App Server or PASOE, and there were end customers logging in to the site and accessing the application that way, then that would be licensed differently. They are classified as "Unknown Users" and so models like Named User or Registered Device are not applicable. You would license the App Servers or PASOE under the Access Agent model. In that case the "user" in question is not the person, it is the agent process. You buy Access Agents based on how many App Server or PAS agents you want to be able to run.
 

Rob Fitzpatrick

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
Maintenance has a few different tiers (Limited, Standard, and Enterprise, from memory). Maintenance contracts are annual and costs are a percentage of the licensing cost. I think Standard maintenance is 22% of list, but I don't have the price list in front of me to confirm.
Back in the office. I was almost right: the maintenance and support tiers are called Limited, Standard, and Mission-Critical. Their costs are 18%, 22%, and 25%. For Mission-Critical, they add a flat rate on top of the 25% if your annual support fee is below a minimum value. That rate will vary by PSC sales territory.

Note: Limited Support is only available to ISVs (Application Partners) who provide first-line tech support.

Note: These maintenance and support rates currently apply only to OE 12.x and 11.7. For OE 11 (below 11.7), the rates go up to 19%, 23%, and 26% respectively. For v8, v9, and OE 10, the rates each rise another point to 20%, 24%, and 27% respectively. So it pays to stay current.
 
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