.NET Open Client Support FAQ
- Last Updated: May 13, 2026
- 3 minute read
- OpenEdge
- Version 12.8
- Documentation
Which versions of .NET are supported in OpenEdge?
.NET Open Client targets .NET Standard 2.0. From OpenEdge 12.4 onwards, .NET Open Client can be used with any .NET implementation that supports .NET Standard 2.0. See the Microsoft .NET Standard documentation for more information about .NET Standard and supported .NET implementations. For details on which versions of .NET have been certified for use with OpenEdge, see the OpenEdge 12 Platform Compatibility Guide.
What platforms can I run .NET Open Client applications on?
Open Client applications can be run on any platform that supports .NET Standard 2.0 targeted libraries. This means that they can be run on Linux and Windows using .NET, and on Windows using .NET Framework.
What .NET libraries do I need for my Open Client applications?
In addition to the Progress provided Progress.Messages.dll and Progress.o4glrt.dll, .NET Open Client applications require the System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager package
version 4.7. This can be automatically retrieved from NuGet by including a reference
to System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager
in your application project.
How do I build an existing Open Client application to target .NET?
You can use msbuild.exe from the .NET
Software Development Kit or from Visual Studio or the .NET Software Development Kit.
You cannot use the old .NET Framework Software Development Kit, which makes use of
the csc compiler.
Does running ProxyGen require .NET Framework?
Running ProxyGen itself requires .NET Framework. ProxyGen uses xsd.exe to generate proxies that make use of temp-tables or datasets. xsd.exe is included with the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK. For more information, see Install .NET Framework for developers.
What changes to ProxyGen have been made to support .NET?
The csc compiler is no longer called by ProxyGen to compile proxy libraries.
ProxyGen requires the use of the MSBuild compiler. You will need to have the .NET
Desktop Development Component of Visual Studio or MSBuild Tools installed. If you
have an existing .xpxg file that uses a custom
compiler, you will need to open the .xpxg file in
the GUI ProxyGen tool and update the compiler settings to use MSBuild. If you do not
migrate the .xpxg file to MSBuild, Batch ProxyGen
will fail. If the .xpxg file uses the default
compiler, then ProxyGen will attempt to locate MSBuild automatically.
ProxyGen now generates .NET standard targeted libraries. Progress recommends
that in your ProxyGen .xpxg file you make use of
the strong-named and signed libraries, as this recommendation follows Microsoft’s
recommended best practice. ProxyGen generates and uses standard Microsoft Visual
Studio SDK style project files for compilation of the ProxyGen libraries.
The Open Client libraries (Progress.o4glrt.dll, and Progress.Messages.dll) and the proxy libraries generated by ProxyGen
are configured to target MSIL compatible bytecode. These libraries can be used with
either .NET applications or .NET Framework applications on 32-bit or 64-bit .NET
runtimes.
The custom compiler page in the GUI ProxyGen tool has some user interface changes to support MSBuild instead of csc. Visual Studio 15.3 is the minimum version needed to compile .NET standard libraries. For more information, see the Microsoft .NET Standard documentation.
If I continue using the Open Client Toolkit, what changes do I need to make?
If your .NET application is targeting the .NET Framework, you can update your application by including library references to the updated Open Client libraries and any generated proxy libraries.
If your .NET application is targeting either .NET Framework or .NET, you will
need to ensure your project has a package reference to the System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager version 4.7. You can add
this package reference to your applications csproj
file from within Microsoft Visual Studio or the .NET software development kit. Download
the required package here.
How do I install .NET in an existing OpenEdge environment?
You can download .NET from the .NET download site.
How do I install Visual Studio?
You can download Visual Studio from the Visual Studio download site.