OpenEdge supports a multi-threaded architecture (for SQL and utilities only), multi-process architecture, which provides multiple paths to a database. A multi-threaded, multi-process architecture provides specific functionality for a database in the following ways:

• Each local client or self-serving client can access the database and service its own requests.
• Each database server listens for and runs requests for one or more remote clients. The database broker initializes shared memory and either starts a new server for each additional client or set of clients that access the database or dispatches additional clients to an existing server.
• All machines that run operating systems with shared memory can run a SQL server as multi-threaded, enabling multiple remote clients on a network to access the database simultaneously using shared memory.