Which controls come with the Infragistics .NET set from Prog

Can anyone confirm which set of controls from Infragistics Progress provide if purchased via them? Is it the whole .NET Advantage suite, or a cut down list ?

I think it's all of the WinForms controls, subject to certain restruictions. From the ABL Help on the NEW function:

  If object-type-name specifies a .NET object, note that in ABL you cannot instantiate the following .NET classes: 

  Any .NET class that is defined in the default namespace, that is, where the class name is the complete object type name 

  System.Threading.Thread or any class derived from it 

  System.Delegate or any delegate type derived from it 

-- peter

Well, you probably asked for the amount of Controls. AFAIK all IG WinForms Controls are in the box, but there are some components, you will not receive tech-support for. But somebody from PSC needs to clarify that.

But there are other differences:

Buy them from IG, and you get full source code...

Buy them from PSC, and the use of the Controls is restricted to the Progress toolset, i.e. you won't be able to use them in the Visual Studio.

Price is differenct, but be aware, that from IG you need to renew the subscription for the full price each year. PSC has the first time purchase price and from there on you pay maintenance fees. So they are much cheaper in the second year from PSC.

how often are the PSC versions updated, though ? The toolset that ships with 10.2A is a version or two behind the current IG controls.

Thanks for all the input so far. We are currently planning our migration to 10.2A, and I believe one of the critical decisions we need to make is which component set to purchase & use.

We currently have some Component One components already (bought the ActiveX suite, which also included the .NET equivalents). The options are:

- use the Component One components, which appear to work well with 10.2A

- purchase the Infragistics controls, which appear richer in functionality than the Component One components, and

     - purchase from Progress, with the benefits (support, pay only maintenance after year one) and limitatations (older versions, cannot use in non Progress based products)

     - or, purchase direct from Infragistics - up to date, can use in non Progress applications vs. no support from Progress, higher cost after year one

Is there anything else we should be considering?

Thanks.

If you're familiar with the Component One controls and potentiall plan to be using "old" applications using the Component One Controls and new 10.2A GUI for .NET based applications I'd definitively consider using them. Also because you seem to have a license already.

You'd receive the same look and feel for the "old" and new screens and you should not underestimate the time required to learn the IG Controls. They can be pretty nasty sometimes.

But you mentioned some limitations in the Component One Controls, maybe they are big enough, that you have to make the switch.

mikefe wrote:
If you're familiar with the Component One controls and potentiall plan to be using "old" applications using the Component One Controls and new 10.2A GUI for .NET based applications I'd definitively consider using them. Also because you seem to have a license already.
You'd receive the same look and feel for the "old" and new screens and you should not underestimate the time required to learn the IG Controls. They can be pretty nasty sometimes.
But you mentioned some limitations in the Component One Controls, maybe they are big enough, that you have to make the switch.

"Nasty" is a very polite term

"Nasty" is a very polite term 

I do my very best!

mikefe wrote:
Well, you probably asked for the amount of Controls. AFAIK all IG WinForms Controls are in the box, but there are some components, you will not receive tech-support for. But somebody from PSC needs to clarify that.

All IG WinForms Controls are in the box, and all are supported by PSC.

     -Martha

Your comment regarding the restriction on using the controls outside the OE product set appears incorrect. To quote from a Progress rep:

Progress does not supply an upgrade to an "unrestricted license". As long as the customer has purchased the Ultra Controls in conjunction with OpenEdge, then they are free to use those controls in whatever manner they choose, including with other development environments such as Visual Studio.

Where did your information come from?

Thanks.

snisar schrieb:
Where did your information come from? 
Thanks.

Well, it came from my PSC sales rep (who is no longer with the company) and discussions I had with Progress during the late beta phase.

But I just tried to use the UltraControls from my Progress license in Visual Studio 2008 and it did work! It would be good to receive clarification form PSC though.

The OpenEdge Ultra Controls is a restricted license and should only be used with OpenEdge. Customers wishing to use Infragistics Controls in a non-OpenEdge environment will need to purchase an unrestricted license directly from Infragistics.

Regards

Kristen

Thanks Kristen!

I just checked the $DLC/license folder for details about the UltraControls license with no success. Are details about the UltraControls license available with the product somewhere?

Kristen,

The comment I provided about the use of the components in non-OE environment came direct from a Progress Sales Rep in the UK. Is there a official document that you can point us to that can offer clarification on this matter?

Regards,

Saquib

The DCL directory doesn't have any licensing information because it isn't required by the 3rd party vendor.

More importantly if you have the sales rep's name could you please pass that along so I can follow-up with them. They misspoke the license terms of these OpenEdge Ultra controls for .NET.

Although these are Infragistics controls, Progress retains the license rights to repackage and redistibute under the Progress EULA, which then restricts the license use to only an OpenEdge environment. In addition, a customer cannot not purchase these controls without one of the following OpenEdge products installed:

Development:

OpenEdge Architect

OpenEdge Studio

4GL Development

OE Development Server

Progress EULA identifies two sections which states that the license restrictions.

Regards

Kristen

I believe TS has a solution in the system you could reference for the full list of supported controls. In addition, you can view the list from the OpenEdge 10.2A FAQ: http://communities.progress.com/pcom/docs/DOC-16734

Regards

Kristen

I did read the EULA yesterday again. For me as a more techie person it's even hard to understand lawyers speak in my native language. It's rather impossible for me to guess, that those quoted paragraphs mean that we are not allowed to use the OpenEdge UltraControls outside the OpenEdge toolset.

A public license FAQ would be helpful!

AFAIK more than 50% of Progress revenue comes from outside the US. And only a minority of the non US customers will be native English speakers.

You're assuming the EULA makes any more sense to a native English speaker ... I think that is unlikely and that the difficulty of comprehension lies in the writing by attorneys for consumption by attornies rather than for consumption by ordinary users.  Every document like this should be accompanied by a simple statement of intent.

tamhas schrieb:
You're assuming the EULA makes any more sense to a native English speaker ...

In this case the document only serves PSCs intention of assuring their interest vs. their suppliers. But it does not support PSCs customers that are often called PSCs partners.

My point is that a EULA is almost never about communicating clearly with the customer.  If anything is clear, it is that no effort has been made to make the document readable by ordinary humans who might be using the software.

He, he, they have heard us... Although some of us would have prefered to read that the control can be used in the Visual Studio as well.

From the new 10.2A FAQ (http://communities.progress.com/pcom/docs/DOC-16734#cf)

Thanks for that!

• Development:
• OpenEdge Architect
• OpenEdge Studio
• 4GL Development
• OE Development Server

For Infragistics VS Progress, here's why I'd go with Infragistics in regards to the availability of the source code of the components (this is what I pleaded to have Progress include the source code in their package, which was refused) - see if it fits your development style:

"Source code (not only the executable code itself, but also all the developer’s comments that are within it) allows us to understand and customize their products to suit our needs or rapidly correct a bug if we can’t wait for them to correct it in a later service pack.  We actually do all that with our current ADM2 implementation for which Progress gives source code access.

Let's say I want to override a specific method in a Lumec made component that inherits from the Infragistics component, the source code will allow me to see what I should be aware of, what properties of the component are normally affected or influenced by the method.  Is it a high level or low level method?  Is it called often from the standard behavior?  When is it called?  Does the comments specify that the method uses some workaround that I should be aware of?  How are the parameters normally used?  Should a passed object have some internal property altered by my override?
Lets say I’m looking for the right component method to use, I see a promising “DrawChart” method, look at the doc and the only information I get from the doc is: “Generates the entire chart image.”  Ok, thanks.  But what properties affect the behaviour of this method?  Does it affect other component properties?  Does it call other methods that could have adverse or wished for effects?
All of this I could see from the source code.  It eliminates a lot of trials and errors and can show things that trials and errors will never show.
And I’m not just saying this theoretically: trust me, I have a lot of experience in this domain with ADM2 components (that’s why I wanted to ensure that source code was available before we went for the Progress repackage) and just having put the tip of a toe in development with Infragistics components shows that we'll loose a lot of time (and a lot of your time via Tech Support calls) and have lower quality code and programs without the Infragistics components’ source code available for us to peek in."

I still wouldn't underestimate the "one tech support contact" as an advantage of getting the Controls from PSC. With the ADM2 you have source code and support from PSC (and ADM2 is still supported by PSC today). So yes, you've got source code and that's the best available documentation. But in case of an issue, you really don't have to care if for instance the PUBLISH statement is misbehaving or the ADM2 uses it wrong. Just log it with PSC. It may be true that you have to wait a while for a fix and live with a workaround for some time. When you get the IG Controls from IG you need to talk to two tech support organizations and be the moderator in between. I'm pretty sure, that Progress has a close relation to the few techies at Infragistics that actually have heard of OpenEdge before.

If you want source code, how about using the Progress version in production and development and a single Infragistics License with source code for documentation (given that only a single developer will be able to understand their surecode). Is that against their licenses?

> Is that against their licenses?

Yes, it's against it, I checked that.  All licenses of the controls must be purchased with the source code.

For the logging of issues with PSC about ADM2, most of the time, it takes at lot less talking with the PSC guy if you isolate the problem in the ADM2 source code yourself and open an issue about it (you always have to build a reproducible bug anyway and it's simpler to isolate the context of the bug with the source code).

For the logging of issues with PSC about ADM2, most of the time,

it takes at lot less talking with the PSC guy if you isolate the

problem in the ADM2 source code yourself and open an issue about

it (you always have to build a reproducible bug anyway and it's

simpler to isolate the context of the bug with the source code).

I know. And very often I have provided the fix to PSC with the expectation to see it in the next commercial release or SP so that I don't have to reapply my own modifications to the new drop.

Still there have been cases where support found/knew the answer.

Do you have source code for all the tools you are using? (Except prowin32.exe )

Yes, it's against it, I checked that.  All licenses of the controls

must be purchased with the source code.

I assume you are referring to this quote from http://www.infragistics.com/products/license.aspx

"If you purchase any license that includes source code in your organization, all licenses for the same product in your organization must be purchased with source code."

Does that also count when a team of 10 developers purchases the OE Ultra Controls from PSC and a single developer out of those 10 purchases the IG Controls with source code?

How does that affect an organization with two distinct developer teams? A team of OE developers using the UltraControls and a team of .NET developers using a license directly from IG (including source code)? Does that mean that this organization needs to purchase 20 licenses of the IG Controls?

I guess that's a question for Kristen. The question is if for the sake of the IG license agreement the OE UltraControls and an Infragistics Control suite with source code is considered "the same product".

> Do you have source code for all the tools you are using?

Our principal tool is ADM2 and we have the source for it (I didn't know this when I began with Progress in 2002...). Other tools (e.g. COM objects) that we do not have the source for are always more of a pain to use and debug.