Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Getting Started:
Welcome to Release 10
OpenEdge Studio
For developing applications, OpenEdge Studio provides a complete, integrated set of graphical development tools to productively build, test, and maintain applications. At the heart of OpenEdge Studio lies the Progress Fourth Generation Language (4GL), a complete programming language that allows developers to totally control application interfaces, processing logic, and data—the control required to complete mission-critical systems.
OpenEdge Studio is comprised of the following tools:
Using these tools, developers can produce all the necessary components of their mission-critical applications—front-end graphical and character interfaces, complex logic processing procedures, batch processes, production reports, and outside software integration.
Progress Dynamics
Progress Dynamics is an application framework offered by the OpenEdge platform. It is a repository-based development and deployment environment for distributed applications. Progress Dynamics represents an application development paradigm concentrating on using data to replace hard-coded application attributes. User interface methods, security and administrative control, application attributes, and characteristics—all can be controlled by manipulating database entries instead of using more traditional, hard-coded methodologies. The goal is to make the application more flexible in development, deployment, and operation by eliminating coding related to user interface deployments, individual screen configurations, and other application attributes associated with individual installations—even group roles and individual users.
Progress Dynamics also includes a set of customizable environment managers that create a complete environment for running a distributed application. These managers handle session and context management, configuration, personalization, and localization. The development environment is fully integrated into the AppBuilder.
AppBuilder
The AppBuilder is a visual programming environment. It unifies traditional client/server and n-tier functionality with Web-based technology, to support a broad, integrated range of application and development options. With the AppBuilder, you can quickly create complex application interfaces by simply defining and positioning user controls and database information on the screen in a visual point-and-drag environment. You can assemble applications using a variety of objects, ranging in scale from individual controls like command buttons, pull-down menus, check boxes, and radio sets to more robust reusable components like data browsers, data frames, navigation panels, tab folders, and third-party components.
The AppBuilder provides shortcuts for creating standard business objects through SmartObjects. These are procedures that encapsulate standard user interface logic and data. SmartObjects automate development by letting you quickly and easily create reusable code in a graphical, object-oriented, programming environment. Once created, you can assemble SmartObjects into applications by pointing and clicking. The AppBuilder supplies several powerful SmartObjects templates, which you can use and customize. You also can create your own SmartObjects. SmartObjects include Progress SmartDataViewers™, Progress SmartDataBrowsers™ and Dynamic SmartDataBrowsers, Progress SmartPanels™, Progress SmartWindows™, Progress SmartFrames™, Progress SmartToolbars™, SmartSelects, Progress SmartDataFields™, SmartFilters, Progress SmartDataObjects™, Progress™ SmartB2BObjects (Business-to-Business), and SmartSenders, Smart Receivers, SmartProducers, and SmartConsumers.
WebSpeed Workshop
WebSpeed Workshop is an integrated development environment that lets you perform many functions—such as code editing, file management and database reference—via a browser. It provides a robust set of tools, including SpeedScript, a high-level, server-side, 4GL scripting language, that enables you to quickly prototype, develop, and maintain reusable application business logic, super-procedures, and dynamic queries/buffers.
You can develop and deploy Internet applications using XML, HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, and Java, by embedding SpeedScript directly into your HTML pages, or by using HTML mapping to bind HTML files to business logic. You can use wizards and templates to create professional, multi-page Internet Transaction Processing applications with little or no coding, significantly cutting development time while preserving the ability to customize your application.
Open Client Toolkit
The Open Client Toolkit allows you to develop Java, .NET, and Web services clients that access the AppServer. You can deploy these clients in a client/server, n-tier, or Web-based environment.
Data Dictionary
The Data Dictionary provides a complete set of menu-driven facilities for creating and maintaining database definitions, application defaults, and business rules. The Data Dictionary serves as a central storage mechanism for all database information, insulating you from the specific details of each database type and location.
All OpenEdge development tools, as well as the Progress 4GL, use Data Dictionary defaults automatically when building new application components. Centrally defining and maintaining these defaults once in the Data Dictionary greatly reduces the amount of time it takes to create any individual piece of your application. A single change to a Data Dictionary definition is inherited by every application component that refers to the original definition. As a result, these central defaults promote application consistency, increase productivity, and reduce maintenance costs.
Database Administration
The Database Administration facility allows you to perform a variety of database maintenance tasks, including dumping and loading data and definitions, exchanging definition information from non-Progress data sources, defining application security and permissions, and importing and exporting data to and from a variety of sources.
The Database Administration facility is useful for initially building an application database, as well as maintaining and tailoring a deployed database at a user site.
Procedure Editor
The Procedure Editor allows you to quickly build, modify, and test all OpenEdge application components. The Procedure Editor provides a full range of editing features, including file drag-and-drop, cut-and-paste, and search-and-replace, which allow you to make large-scale changes to several different programs quickly. As a result, you can work on multiple programs concurrently.
PRO*Tools
PRO*Tools is a set of utility programs that help you develop and run OpenEdge applications. They include the AppServer Session Information, Color Changer, Configuration Information, Database Connections, Font Changer, OS Prompt, Procedure Object Viewer, COM Object Viewer, ProtoGen, Run Procedure, PROPATH Editor, Screen Capture, Screen Scaling, Session Attributes, SmartObjects Conversion Utility, Static SmartObject, Dynamic Object Conversion Utility, Window Viewer, and Windows Information.
Progress Results
Progress Results is an interactive tool that lets end users with little or no programming experience query, report on, and maintain information stored in database tables. You, the application developer, also can customize Results according to the needs of individual sites, and then integrate it into your delivered applications.
Progress Report Engine
Progress Report Engine allows you to run reports created by Report Builder from Progress 4GLapplications.
Application Compiler
The Application Compiler is a tool for compiling individual source procedures or a group of procedures to produce executable code that is stored permanently.
Application Debugger
The Application Debugger provides a complete set of facilities to help you locate and correct errors in application logic or data handling in any OpenEdge application component.
The Debugger allows you to understand and track the flow of control in an application. You can examine the contents of the application’s buffers and variables, as well as state information and trace processing events. You can quickly and easily validate applications, thereby maximizing quality and shortening the time to application completion.
Online help
Online help provides immediate access to information while working with a software application. OpenEdge Studio provides three ways you can include online help with your application: help strings, Tool Tips, and integrated online help systems.
WebClient
WebClient is a graphical 4GL client specially designed to execute Progress applications over the Internet. It serves as the end user’s window into a Web-enabled Progress application. The applications run using a WebClient that end users have installed on their machine, typically over the Web. The WebClient is reduced in size and streamlined in functionally, to allow users to more quickly download and run it over the Web.
IntelliStream™ is Progress technology that supports the installation and deployment of WebClient applications. After an application's initial deployment, IntelliStream automates and streamlines the management process by enabling the WebClient to determine that the application needs to be updated; it then downloads only those changed resources to the client machine. It delivers exactly the parts of an application that end-users need, when they need them. IntelliStream has a flexible, server-based provisioning model. That is, an application provider can store application resources on a Web server or with the AppServer.
Unlike a standard OpenEdge Windows GUI client, WebClient cannot directly access any data source, including the OpenEdge RDBMS. Its purpose is to run only user interface code, leaving the database access and other business logic and validation functions to be done by the AppServer. The applications must have proper separation of user interface and business logic. WebClient runs on the end-user’s PC, executing 4GL user interface code and communicating with the AppServer over the Web using HTTP or HTTPS tunneling (AIA/S). Support for HTTP tunneling with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provides HTTPS and enables the WebClient to ensure the security of message transmissions.
|
Copyright © 2005 Progress Software Corporation www.progress.com Voice: (781) 280-4000 Fax: (781) 280-4095 |