Progress or Microsoft.Net ?

[H0SCHI]

Hi,

i got a question about Progress.

In the near future our Company wants to develope a new business Software.

My Question now is, if it's better to start develope in Microsof.Net or maybe in Progress.

As i dont know much about Progress, could someone tell me the
Pro's and con's about Progress against Microsoft.Net ?

A link with information would also be fine.

Thx for you help.
Hoschi

 

[toby.Harman]

There's an interesting question.

From a Biased (pro Progress) point of view.

.Net appears to me to be a bunch of different languages which all compile to a common run-time code. To develop a large application using .Net will require use of SQL to access the database, and one or more different languages to represent that data on the client.

Progress is a single uniform 4GL from which most of the application can be written.

Both environments allow you to call ActiveX etc into your application, with relative ease, for Windows Clients.

If you are developing a Web Based application you will probably need to embed JavaScript/VBScript into your HTML pages, so that remains the same.

Progress Run-time will run on most flavours of operating system from Linux through Windows to AIX, HP-UX and Solaris. .Net will currently run on Windows and (I am told) HP-UX boxes.

Both provide a development environment, but I am told by a fan of .NET that Progress' ADM2 is a superior product for systems development. Having not used ADM1 or 2 much, let alone .NET, I have no real comment on this so pass along his comments!

www.progress.com will be your best source of Progress related information.

 

[Olivier_Desmars]

In my opinion, Progress and .Net have nothing in common.

While Progress is a multi-OS 4GL with fully integrated RDBMS, .Net is only a common framework to multiple languages which is dedicated to Windows OS only (at last for the moment).

If you choose .Net, you have to think about changing your database system from Progress to SQL Server. While small progress DB does not need much management (I have some customers that runs a 1GB progress database on PII-233 laptop and who only make one reindexation in a year), an SQL Server DB needs much more attention (just think about security holes for example).

All in all, .Net is not a bad system, but in my opinion it's not mature enough comparing to a good old and stable Progress system

 

[jeffcoop_69]

Here is my 2 cents: I've been programming in Progress for a few years now (since 1995) so I'm a bit biased also but what I can see is that Progress is starting to place more of an emphasis on the dB and "business logic" portions of your application. If I was starting a new application my choice would be a combination of the 2 (.net framework and Progress) together. If you choose .net you don't have to go with another database because the progress dB works great with sql connections. I would use Progress for the database because of the ease of management and you could use the Progress 4GL for your business logic procedures because usually the "core" functionality of your business doesn't change a whole lot. You could use the .net for your front end access of your application because let's face it, Progress can't keep up with all of the different changes with front end screen design, web access, etc...
You can check out www.progress.com for more info. Hope this helps.

 

[Skc]

I would use Progress for the database because of the ease of management and you could use the Progress 4GL for your business logic procedures because usually the "core" functionality of your business doesn't change a whole lot. You could use the .net for your front end access of your application....

Has anyone tried this? If you use .Net, it appears that you will have to use ADO.Net for access to databases. As far as I know, ADO.Net accesses database thru 'Disconnected datasets'. In theory this means that data is read into memory first and the connection to the db is disconnected.

Whatever updates/deletes/adds that you do on the client PC only affects the memory. After that the programmer has to connect back to the db, do a kind of 'batch' update to the database and ensure that he takes care of exceptions.

To me, this disconnected architecture seems very awkward to use in particular for normal PC-based (non-Web) applications . It's not the kind of dynamic update to the .db that we have now with the Progress 4GL. That's the reason I hesitate to use .Net unless someone can tell me ADO.net is not as complex as I think.