Among the principal benefits that the Visual Designer provides to ABL application developers are the following:

  • The OpenEdge GUI for .NET (that is, the application presentation layer developed with the Visual Designer) takes advantage of full-featured, visually compelling .NET controls.
  • The Visual Designer supports coding entirely in ABL. There is no need to learn or use any other programming language.
  • Controls can be bound to ABL data sources (databases, temp-tables, and ProDataSets).
  • Use of the Visual Designer facilitates separation of the application presentation layer (UI) from the business logic layer, the recommended approach for promoting efficient maintenance and reuse of application modules.