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In the current economic crisis, companies hold a tight grip on their wallet. There is little room for investment. Yet the demands of the customer continue to grow steadily: The interface should have the Office 2010 look and access via the Internet is not the focus anymore, instead the data should be available on the iPhone and iPad; and last but not least, it must of course be fast.
The bulk of the Progress applications that is currently in the market are all 10 to 15 years old and are built to the then current Client-Server architecture.
By today's standards, however, they are monolithic structures because the code that controls the user interface is inextricably intertwined with the code that handles the business logic.
Well, it's allways easy to be wise in hindsight, as we now indulgently smile at the statement of Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM from 1943: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
But there is light at the end of the tunnel because the Progress world also developed, the 4GL has been expanded and the Windows95 look and feel has been replaced by .NET.
The important change however is in the OpenEdge frameworks, like iMo, OF-1, Smart Component Library and XE-Files. They all offer a separation of user interface and business logic, but the real breakthrough is the one-off design of the user interface before it can almost be created or generated as a .NET interface for the GUI, a web interface based on Ajax or Java or a mobile app for the SmartPhone, iPhone or iPad.