Version differences?

[BuckeyeMan56]

Hi, Folks! Have a question about the differences between versions 7 and 9..Is there anything major, any specific "gotchas"? I have an opportunity that is still using v7.3, and my earliest exposure to Progress is v9.1D. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[TomBascom]

1) You will get even stronger warnings from me about ancient, obsolete and unsupported versions of Progress.

2) 7.3 was extraordinarily buggy. Especially 7.3c01. But one particular vendor, who is known for their intransigence, absolutely insisted that their customers must use that release and no other. That same vendor has a similar position about 9.1c.

3) 7.3 lacks many major important features that were added in later releases. It's hard to know where to start listing them. User defined functions spring to mind. VSTs are another. Dynamic queries. Variable database block sizes, rows per block, storage areas, large files (no more 2GB limit). CCLP. etc, etc, etc.

 

[tamhas]

In fact, one of the few good things one can say about 7.3 is that we got persistent procedures which helped a lot to make some of the event-driven stuff in 7.2 nominally usable. But, compare that with later releases, especially anything recent and it conjures up an image of some air-breathing fish with leg-like fins crawling out of the primordial ooze.

Of course, considering that I started working with version 2 and wrote my first app in 3, perhaps I'd better be careful about my analogies, especially that I had 20 years working as a programmer before I got to Progress. I suppose that puts me back in the realm of early sponges or something. But, I'm using 10.2A today, so I guess some of evolve and others don't.