| OpenEdge is their DB. It has 1 storage engine but 2 ways to get to it: SQL and 4GL. If you write SQL, OpenEdge is relational DB. If you write 4GL, OpenEdge isn't relational unless you write relationship on application layer. Yeah, it's interesting. 4GL (aka ABL or Advanced Business Language) is the language that works best with OpenEdge. You write 4GL code, compile and deploy it to a specialized Tomcat environment called PASOE (Progress Application Server for Open Edge). It's their container to run 4GL apps. WebSpeed is their middleware to serve APIs using 4GL code. Companies stuck in the desktop world are using WebSpeed to refactor their code and expose business logic to other languages through WebSpeed API middleware. They acquired Telerik some time back. Those controls are used by .NET web devs and desktop devs. They are cool controls. I like them. Telerik controls are also integrated with their 4GL desktop environment. Kendo UI are tools/controls for the web and are pretty neat as well. Fiddler is also their product now. DataDirect is a suite of connectors to make it easy for devs to connect between different DBs from 4GL, and for other languages to use DataDirect to connect to OpenEdge or call 4GL methods. Corticon is their version of Dell Boomi or Alooma or Prismatic.io. It's a tool to run business processes with no code or low code. It's neat if you have tech savvy business analysts who like to use tools like that. Sitefinity is their version of WordPress/Drupal/content frameworks. Sitefinity has its place. NativeClient is their product to build mobile-first application across various platforms. They whipped up a neat app at their conference and it really worked well. Yes, it may have been cowboy-coded a bit, but it worked as intended. Now they acquired Chef. I am sure there was a demand for orchestration within their client-base. They are making improvements steadily. They have a strategy. They have a niche target market, primarily in LATAM and EU and less so in North America. They do not have a great version control, static analysis, dynamic analysis, orchestration tools. Companies like Intuit and Fiserv seems to have built their own ecosystem around 4GL tools, but many companies just have primitive means of development with 4GL, still. Progress is trying to stay current. Their customers are much slower at adopting to changes in engineering; perhaps what they have just works for them. Not sure. Acquiring chef is a good move. I've worked with their products for 2-3 years. It wasn't fun. I don't like 4GL. I'd like if Progress made SQL a first class citizen and invite PHP/Python/Ruby/etc. communities to write code against OpenEdge. From a business standpoint, I feel they are trying their best to stay modern and relevant. They are acquiring products that are indeed making their ecosystem cohesive. |