Progress Software Corp, Bedford, Massachusetts, predicts a move for the 1990s from database-orientated strategies to application development environments that will exploit nearly any relational database management system environment. The aim of the fourth generation language, with the advance of technology, is to increase the speed with which application programs are created and information accessed using standard-query language, which has liberated fourth-generation languages from the need to be tied to database software and a data dictionary to manipulate information. Progress, as with many other fourth-generation languages, is written in C. This gives access at a very low functional level, enabling portability as well as incorporating some extremely powerful features. Initially Progress focussed on fast and efficient applications builders but then turned its attention to inter-operability, the ability to insulate the application from changes in hardware, operating system, database system and graphical interface. Version 6 of the Progress application system will allow access to information stored in DEC’s RDB/VMS database as well as Oracle and the firm’s own database manager (CI No 1,305). Via the protocols TCP/IP, NetBIOS and DECnet it will access Oracle, RMS, RDB, both embedded and dynamic Standard Query Language and X Window. Plans for future developments include triggers, new graphical interfaces, interfaces between software engineering tools and Progress and support for additional database managers. Progress is sold directly or through value-added resellers that can custom build an application. Version 6 will be released in the second quater of next year, prices range from UKP1,000 for a small personal computer to UKP100,000 for a VAX multi-user system. There are about 300 off-the-shelf applications and Progress Software hopes to increase this number by 50% next year. Customers include the International Treasury of the New York-based Citibank and the retail division of ICL. Progress’s fiscal year closed on the last day of November with 40% of its $25m turnover from Europe. This is a 50% increase on last year’s figure.
