Joey,
I apologize for all these questions.
there's no separate progress license costs, it's embedded in the products cost which would need to be competitive.
Does this mean that the vendor actually decides the Progress licensing amount? Furthermore, when considering the upgrade to Progress 10.x, is the vendor the party who dictates to us what the 10.x licensing will cost us? So, if there was no change necessary to the application source code, but the user wished to upgrade to version 10.x to eliminate some of the SQL/ODBC problems inherent in 9.x (like having to stop and restart the database to make changes to the SQL Width), would the license cost be determined by the application vendor?
This is very unusual to me. I am accustomed to being given application requirements - platform, cpu, memory, operating system, libraries, etc. - that I must acquire in order to run the licensed application.
Furthermore, this truly places an enormous responsibility on the application vendor. Creating a well-designed, robust, scalable business application is challenging by itself. Systems integration is a challenging arena for anyone. It seems far too much to expect the application vendor to understand the technical difficulties of integrating Progress with the end user's applications and network. Franky, this would be funny if we did not have a Progress application. We will be free of this, though. At that time, I'll be laughing because Progress has pursued this course on their own.
I appreciate the insight you've given me. Our relationship with Progress and the vendor is like a very bad marriage. The divorce may get ugly, but we will be free to enjoy our life when it is over.