Smart objects

T

Tarby777

Member
Hi all,

I've never bothered to learn Smartobjects but recently I've been thinking about it, just to add another string to my bow. However, chatting to people I get the impression that they're in decline and that very little - if any - new development is being done with them. One guy suggested that .NET client + Prodatasets would be a much better thing to look into.

What do you reckon? Does a reasonable knowledge of ADM2 count for much these days?

TIA
Tarby
 
Bunches of people use ADM in one of its flavors and a bunch of people wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. The hot thing at the moment seems to be ABL GUI for .NET, which is understandable in that one can make very sexy interfaces, but which I wonder about a bit because it is still a fat client and requires a license on the client system (unless you can use WebClient). Personally, I think that technology independence is the way to go for UI, so experimenting with the Open Client world might well be the thing to do. As for PDS, check out http://communities.progress.com/pcom/thread/17178?tstart=0
 
ADM knowledge is useful with certain legacy products. If you already work with them then it is potentially worth learning about. Otherwise I wouldn't waste any time on it.
 
I agree with Tom. I've been working with ADM 1+2 for the last 7 years, and although it's great for rapid development, it's not flexible enough to cope with more recent demands for application flexibility.

If I was going to sink some R&D time into something right now, I'd look at DLL and Webservice proxy generation and management to open up the progress database and business logic to as many technologies as possible. And then I'd learn C#.NET.
 
OpenClient lets you keep your ABL skills exercised and you or someone else can do whatever you use for the UI. C# is getting a lot of noise these days, but you have to ask yourself where people are going to be when the dust settles. C# and Java client allow you to make very nice clients, but C# is a Windows technology ... popular right now, but is that where the trend is going? And, both require an install on the client box, which is a big pain when one has hundreds of users to keep synced. Myself, I think the flyweight client is very exciting using technologies like Ajax to make them high quality. We have no idea what technology is going to win out for rich browser UI, if any, but I don't think it matters since if you have a sense how to work with one, you will probably be able to switch to another easily.
 
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