Progress OpenEdge RDBMS Reviews

We're primarily a middleware solution and we integrate loyalty customer management systems with points of purchase, and those points of purchase can include point of sale, gas pumps, kiosks, mobility, et cetera. We provide several suites of services, however, there are two or three primary services. One is we expose existing marketing loyalty-type benefits and allow customers to dynamically inquire, redeem, and see these from multiple sources at a single point of purchase. For example, as a casino customer, I can see all my benefits, see what's going on, I can make a choice at the time of purchase based on my basket of goods. Another service is allowing gas stations operated by Tribal and casino operators to expose coupons, points, marketing offers, et cetera, at the actual gas pump and use us for the purchase of fuel.

We also have a category of private card op management, including private gift cards, fleet cards, the ability to do employee cards, again using the same type of very sophisticated programming where you can manage any of our offers or anything you're doing in the marketing offer, and you have the ability to set time of day, day, basket, types of products, category of consumer, blackout dates, and more. All of it is in real-time and can be all divined in real-time and so I can dynamically kick you out stuff, based on a customer's behavior at the moment. The system is all designed to do a dynamic real-time interpretation of what they're buying, how much, how frequently, et cetera, and make decisions on what the customer is entitled to.

The real-time aspect of the solution is very important to us, as is the ability to uniquely construct the behaviors and the conditions under which customers are allowed to consume things. In real-time, being able to look at what a consumer is buying, how much, when, and when they last bought is crucial to targeting correctly. The ability to do it all at these various endpoints, especially as fuel dispensers, makes it an excellent solution.

It is very customizable and it's intelligent. It modifies behavior based on what is available and who the customer is. If you're a customer, you have coupons and points you'll see certain offers that will be different if you're a Tribal member and you have this other discount available. It will know who you are and it'll present you with the correct options. 

The solution is stable.

We find the product to be scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

There aren't any areas of improvement. We have a very long relationship with their R&D group. They're fairly dynamic there, however, it's not the relationships I manage. The only big hurdle for us is that most customers aren't familiar with it, so it's scary. If you're in commercial environments, everybody knows SQL, everybody knows Oracle, or whatever. It doesn't really matter due to the fact that it's embedded, however, they're paying those licenses. The only drawback is you can't just say, "Hey, provide us three Enterprise SQL licenses," and they just go reach into their Microsoft licensing deal and plug them in and go. Instead, it's plugging a new product into the mix that they otherwise would take care of on their own. The apparent cost is higher, however, in the end, it's really not.

I've been using the solution for 28 years or so. I've used it for a very long time. 

The solution is pretty stable. Customers simply provide us network configuration information, provide our interfaces to the systems that we talk to and it's plug and play.

The solution is very stable and has multi-tenant capabilities. 

Technical support is great. It's 24/7, 365 days a year.

I do not handle the initial implementation. I go out and I'll train and I'll do things. I'm doing projects, running projects and I'll do business development, core work and I know all our solutions. I do not get involved in the nitty-gritty. I just stay out of it.

That said, the initial setup is pretty turnkey. It's actually very simple. We drop a turnkey solution in and go.

We've been partners for 28 years.

The solution can be an on-premises deployment. It can be hosted, however, due to the nature of the solution, it typically isn't. We have several we operate, and they're high-speed, real-time transactional interfaces that interface with the point of sale, gas pumps, all types of things. Proximity often is relevant and you can't run a gas pump if you lose your connection to a cloud, so we, generally, 99% of the time, use on-premises.

If you've decided you want these advanced marketing capabilities, you want the ability to pay and consume at the pump, you want the ability to do this robust offer management capability or custom private fleet cards, et cetera, you should look at this solution. There isn't an industry solution in casino hospitality, that does what we do today. It's kind of lateral, bilateral. We don't go at marketing hard, people know of us in the industries we're in and that's it.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

I'm a project manager and we are distributors of the product. Our primary use case of the solution is for the purpose of storing data. The product is a standard relational database. 

Current key valuable features would be the SSJ (Server Side Join), and logical partitioning. 

Achieving 99,999% of High Availability within 2020.

I've been using this product for 20+ years. 

As mentioned before: Very stabler, it runs and runs. 

The product can be scaled in any direction, physically or logically. 

Progress offer standard technical support, and they are very responsive if you need it. So they provide 24x7 support and usually the response time is online and within minutes, so we are very happy with it.

I've used many other DBs including Oracle, DB2, Informix, Ingres, Sybase, Postgress, MS SQL. The Progress OpenEdge is simple to administrate (do not need an FTE), and very stable. Once you switch it on, it simply runs and runs.

Initial setup is very straightforward, it would take anyone just a few minutes - it's not rocket science. 

If you compare it to Oracle, for example, this database doesn't require an FTE for administration.  

Did not calculate it.

One of the unbeatable options which Progress offers to its ISVs is licensing based on PoA (Percentage of Application). This allows to partners to focus on their business despite the fact if the DB is running on premise or cloud.

At the time we did not evaluate other options. 

Advice? Do not be afraid to use a product even from the not-so-known vendor like Progress Software. Except for the RDBMS they have other excellent products, but people do not know them.

I have been working with Progress OpenEdge 4GL and RDBMS for nearly 20 years now. For developing robust, scalable business applications, I have found myself turning to OpenEdge RDBMS and integrated 4GL languages again and again.

Writing business applications in a fourth generation language, such as Progress, allows one to readily adopt rapid application development, DevOps and agile methodologies.

Prototyping can be done quickly. Straightforward English-like syntax makes learning the language fairly straightforward.

Built-in database support makes working with data sets extremely simple.

Another nice feature is being able to port your application to any environment which supports the Progress OpenEdge RDBMS, allowing the application to remain largely platform/OS agnostic.

By being able to get more done with less code, development times are reduced, which means quicker to market with new IPs and lower costs.

The Windows Character Client.

Nearly 20 years, in the transport, manufacturing, finance, and banking sectors.

None. We have found the OpenEdge RDBMS and integrated 4GL language to be extremely robust. One application we have been maintaining since the late 1990s has been migrated multiple times across on-premise, cloud, operating systems, and so forth, and continues to work just as reliably as it always has.

None. I've personally never had any issues with a Progress database. It's my 'go to' database if I want a database to just run 24/7/365, year-after-year with absolute minimal downtime. As newer versions come along, even major maintenance operations can largely be done online (though no DB can ever be 100% up all the time).

None. Properly tuned and maintained systems can handle very large databases. The main issues you can run into with scalability is code. You need to ensure that your record and transaction scoping are tight.

Also, check index usage and ensure the database is properly structured and the queries are supported by appropriate indexes.

I have used the managed MDBA service that Progress Software Professional Services offer. They are very good and proactive.

Very good, whilst the RDBMS and language are very robust, on the few times I've had to lodge a support ticket, I've found their support teams to be well informed and helpful. We've not had any issues that couldn't be resolved in a timely manner.

I've used other language/database combinations at various times. For business applications in particular, I find the Progress environment to be accessible, rapidly prototyping, which makes capturing business requirements simpler.

The installation process can be a bit confusing for someone who's new to OpenEdge. I would like to see the installation process updated somewhat; entering in combination codes and so forth feels a bit old hat.

Both.

Several 100,000/year in hours have been saved in development costs.

I have found them to be easy to deal with. One recent development with an annual subscription model makes the product a lot more accessible than it used to be. Smaller start-ups should take a look at it.

I also work in COBOL. Though I like COBOL, the Progress 4GL has a number of features which I prefer to use.

I suggest reviewing some of the training materials first and become familiar with frames, code blocks, and similar concepts. Their online training material is very good.