Several ABL statements have been identified as deprecated (obsolete) language features. The life-cycle of products and features are described in the OpenEdge 12 Platform Compatibility Guide.

The product direction states that applications using these languages elements will continue to function but it is strongly recommended that applications should stop using these features. In addition, the guide identifies that these features will not get bug fixes or any enhancements.

From these ABL deprecated features, classes do not support the following language elements at all. If the compiler encounters any one of these statements in a class, it generates an error:

  • Support for SQL within ABL:
    • ALTER TABLE statement
    • CLOSE statement
    • CREATE INDEX statement
    • CREATE SCHEMA statement
    • CREATE TABLE statement
    • CREATE VIEW statement
    • DECLARE CURSOR statement
    • DELETE FROM statement
    • DROP INDEX statement
    • DROP TABLE statement
    • DROP VIEW statement
    • FETCH statement
    • GRANT statement
    • INSERT INTO statement
    • OPEN statement
    • REVOKE statement
    • SELECT statement
    • UNION statement
    • UPDATE statement
  • CHOOSE statement
  • EDITING phrase in UPDATE, SET, PROMPT-FOR statements
  • GATEWAYS function
  • GO-PENDING function
  • IS-ATTR-SPACE function
  • PUT SCREEN statement
  • SCROLL statement