The advantages of .NET controls?

However, I'm not sure what the other advantages are

considering that only the GUI side of the GUI uses

.NET. i.e. the rest of the code behind the GUI

controls is still Progress 4GL.

Personally, I think that the fact that the underlying logic is 4GL/ABL is a huge advantage. This lessens the learning curve for developers new to the .Net UI world and allows one to take advantage of existing business logic written for the pre .Net UI application.

If you want the underlying code to be .Net, then you can use Visual Studio to develop the front end and the proxygen tool to allow it to connect to the AppServer.

Thanks for replying.

I can see the advantage of having the 4GL/ABL background (as we already know the language) but what benefits are there to using .NET controls with a ABL background over using the standard Progress controls from the AppBuilder with the same background?

It may look nicer but that isn't an incentive to spend time learning how to use a new environment.

Thanks for replying.

I can see the advantage of having the 4GL/ABL

background (as we already know the language) but what

benefits are there to using .NET controls with a ABL

background over using the standard Progress controls

from the AppBuilder with the same background?

It may look nicer but that isn't an incentive to

spend time learning how to use a new environment.

I understand where you are coming from. I guess it depends on the needs of your organisation. In my experience, when selling software the client wants it to look nice. I have seen functionally inferior products picked because the UI looked better. End user organisation have less incentive to move to the new UI, for sure.

Of course, the new UI is also functionally richer than the existing UI with a lot more scope in the future (an this is where Progress are going to be focusing their efforts - there will be no more development on the current style). I haven't seen the evaluation tool - does it ship with the 'OpenEdge Ultra Tools' (the Infragistics objects)? If not, check them out, or any of the other tool providers (I have used Pure Components with much success).

Ah,

The Eval version doesn't come with the Ultra Tools but it is something I can get an eval license for.

I will have a look.

Thanks for the help again.

The Eval version doesn't come with the Ultra Tools

but it is something I can get an eval license for.

Hmm, that's not very clever from Progress..

I will have a look.

Make sure you evaluate some others too. I did some proof of concept work for a client a few months ago, using a different tool set (for the life of me I don't remember which one it was, but they had it in house) and it worked a charm. If you want to know, just give me a shout and I'll dig it out.

Before you go too far looking at the possibilities for .NET controls, you should be asking yourself what kind of architecture you want. The new ABL GUI for .NET is capable of producing very nice eye candy, but it is still a fat client. Depending on your application and market, that may or may not be ideal. The ABL GUI for .NET is a superb move for someone who has an existing fat client application and wants to dress it up, but for a new application you should at least be giving a hard look at thin or zero footprint clients. Done well, a browser client can be very powerful, providing high functionality, good appearance, and no client install to either pay for or manage. You could also think about webclient using the ABL GUI for .NET (we really need a shorter way to reference that, but no, Greg, it isn't NUI), but recognize that at this point there are some limitations there such as not being able to use statics.