What's New in OpenEdge 12.5

In this release, the ENCRYPT and DECRYPT functions in ABL are extended to support AES-GCM encryption. Prior to this release, ABL developers had to hardcode the AES-GCM cipher suite in their code to meet FIPS compliance.

OpenEdge DataServers now support AE1 and AE2 encryption algorithms in addition to the existing OECH1 algorithm for connecting to foreign data sources, such as Oracle or MS SQL Server databases. As a result, security administrators can now use standards-based encryption algorithms and improve OpenEdge environment security. You can use the genpassword utility to encrypt the user credentials of the foreign databases with the AE1 and AE2 encryption algorithms. You specify the encryption algorithm by using prefixes.

The default encryption prefix for both DataServers is ae2h1.

For more information about DataServer for MS SQL Server, see Database authentication during foreign database connect.

For more information about Oracle DataServers, see Database Authentication During Foreign Database Connect.

Security administrators can now make their OpenEdge installation safer and mitigate potential security vulnerabilities by creating a secure DLC. In a secure DLC environment, OpenEdge components (such as OpenEdge Management, sqlexp, ABL debugger, and so on) that reference the DLC path to installation, validate the DLC or root install path before the components attempt to use artifacts from this path.

When you install OpenEdge, the ESAM installer runs automatically in silent mode. After the OpenEdge installation finishes automatic execution of the ESAM installer, an external safe space called ESAM is created. ESAM is a file system space where you can apply root and group authorities to protect installation artifacts and the integrity of DLC. On a Windows machine, the safe space is created at …/Windows/System32/openedge.d. In the Linux environment, the safe space is created at /etc/openedge.d/.

Now, OpenEdge supports the AGGREGATE statement for use with Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server DataServers. This statement computes aggregate values on the database server for a single table, providing a more efficient approach to get aggregate values compared to using the ACCUMULATE statement and ACCUM function.

For more information, see AGGREGATE statement.

You can now use the Cancel() API to terminate a SQL query in an ODBC or JDBC SQL client. When the SQL client executes the API, the OpenEdge SQL server cancels the query and discards all running operations for that query without impacting other queries or applications. You can use the Cancel() API to cancel SQL SELECT queries that are taking longer than expected.

Data compression is now improved in the OpenEdge Backup utility (PROBKUP).

PROBKUP now compresses data immediately, which allows database administrators to reduce disk space usage and save time needed to back up in both online and offline scenarios. PROBKUP compression now lets you specify a desired compression level. A lower compression level value yields higher compression speed, while a higher level yields higher data compression with the ZSTD compression algorithm. In this release, the default compression algorithm changed from Run-Length Encoding (RLE) to ZStandard (ZSTD).

For more information, see PROBKUP utility.

For more information, see PROUTIL TRUNCATE BI qualifier and Manage before-image file growth.

While using after-image (AI) during disaster recovery, you need better tools to identify the AI files quickly to reduce the recovery time. Prior to this release, there was no quick way to identify the AI files and determine the correct order in which to restore them. Therefore, you needed to either design your own process for identifying AI files or run the full AIMAGE SCAN utility, both of which cost considerable time.

Now, in this release, the new AIMAGE SUMMARY utility runs a quick scan of only the information that you need to identify AI files for faster disaster recovery.

For more information, see Show an after-image file summary.

In the multi-session PAS for OpenEdge agent, a single process runs multiple sessions, each with its own ABL Virtual Machine (AVM). If an unresponsive or long-running session holds a record lock, the available metadata, like process ID (PID), is insufficient to identify the session locking the database record.

The new runtime information output from several database tools provides positive and immediate identification of PID and thread (AS-#) for a database connection from a PASN client. Now, you can uniquely identify sessions and troubleshoot them by looking at the ABL stack. In the case of runaway sessions, you can use the session identifier to safely terminate connections to maintain the uptime of PAS instance and hosted application.

For more information, see Identify unresponsive sessions and PROSHUT command.

Virtual system tables (VSTs) enable an application to examine the status of a database and monitor its performance. With the database broker running, ABL and SQL applications can query a VST and retrieve the specified information as run-time data.

Several VST tables provide timestamp information as character strings that need to be parsed to allow applications to sort, index, or compare datetime values.

For more information on new VST datetime fields with time zone support, see Area status (_AreaStatus), Checkpoint (_Checkpoint), Database connection (_Connect), and Database status (_DbStatus).

While loading table content using the table contents (.d) file, the Data Dictionary now reads the information about the date and numeric formats in the file and then uses the same formats to load the table contents. As a result, the data is loaded correctly and the database administrators need not worry about the date and numeric formats recorded in the table contents file.

For more information, see Load table contents.

Prior to this release, a DBA could not view the progress of index compaction processes. Without a status report on PROUTIL IDXCOMPACT progress, DBAs might wait a long time for a hung process to complete.

When the index compacting utility takes a long time to run, the utility now displays runtime status on screen approximately every two minutes. The status displays how much compacting has completed and how much time remains. You may use Ctrl-C to stop a long-running compacting process.

For more information, see Troubleshoot index compaction.

The PROUTIL IDXFIX qualifier is an online database utility that finds and fixes issues in indexes. It can be used for routine database health checks and when there is a problem in the database that must be repaired. With this improvement, the overall run-time for executing IDXFIX when scanning ALL TABLES is significantly reduced.

For more information, see PROUTIL IDXFIX qualifier

ABL application developers can now override properties in a subclass, whether defined in an ABL or .NET class (.NET overrideable properties are defined with the virtual modifier). Previously, you could only override ABSTRACT properties, but now, you can override non-ABSTRACT properties also. To mark properties that are not overrideable, you can define them in ABL classes as FINAL.

CLASS class1:
  DEFINE PROTECTED PROPERTY myProp AS INT GET. SET.
END CLASS.

CLASS class2 INHERITS class1:
  DEFINE PUBLIC OVERRIDE PROPERTY myProp AS INT
  GET SUPER.
  SET(INPUT pValue AS INT).
    /* default value to 10 if smaller */
    IF pValue < 10 THEN
      pValue = 10.
    SUPER:myProp = pValue.
  END SET.
END CLASS.

To support this feature with reflection, the IsFinal property has been added to the Progress.Reflect.Property class. This property returns TRUE if the method or property is FINAL.

For more information on overriding ABL properties, see Override properties within a class hierarchy.

For more information on overriding .NET properties, see Override .NET virtual properties.

In this release, application developers using object-oriented ABL can use the Safe Navigation Operator (?:) for conditional execution of cascading object-oriented ABL elements. Prior to this release, OOABL developers had to write elaborate code which increased development time and code execution time by the AVM.

OpenEdge now supports built-in list collections in object-oriented ABL. A list, which is a common data structure used in programming, is a collection that maintains a set of elements (objects) to be accessed in sequential order.

The implementations that you earlier had to create for lists, included using the temp-tables, OpenEdge.Core.Collections package, or arrays. All these implementations have limitations and are inefficient for a list use case. To solve these issues, OpenEdge has now implemented an efficient, built-in list collection construct that can be used by any ABL application and supports a type-safe, generic programming model that allows developers to restrict the types of objects added to the list.

Now, OpenEdge supports the generic programming model used in lists by introducing a new syntax. This syntax has defined type parameters within angle brackets (<T>) and is used in other object-oriented languages to represent generic types. For more information on this syntax in ABL, see <T> Generic type reference.

The following example code shows how to create and work with a list:

var Progress.Collections.List<President> thelist.
var Progress.Collections.IIterator<President> iterator.
var President president1.
var President president2.

// Create the list
thelist = new Progress.Collections.List<President>().

// Add 3 elements to the list
thelist:Add(new President("George")).
thelist:Add(new President ("John")).
thelist:Add(new President("Thomas")).

// Retrieve the first element from the list
president1 = thelist:Get(1).
message president1:ToString().

// Replace the first element in the list with a fully named president.
thelist:Set(1, new President("George Washington")).
president2 = thelist:Get(1).
message president2:ToString().

// Remove the second president from the list
thelist:RemoveAt(2).

// Print out the number of presidents in the list
message thelist:Count.

// Iterate over the entries in the list
iterator = thelist:GetIterator().
repeat while iterator:MoveNext():
  message iterator:Current:ToString().
end.

In this release, due to ABL improvements to support generic types as part of the list collections feature, you no longer need to enclose in quotes the references to .NET generic types, in most cases. However, a few conditions still require the quotes. For more detail, see Reference .NET generic types in Use .NET Classes in ABL Applications.

Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge now supports intelligent compilation. When an ABL developer makes changes in a file and compiles it, the Developer Studio automatically compiles all other files that may be impacted by the changes, along with the modified file. As a result, all compilation errors introduced because of the code changes are identified.

For more information, download "OpenEdge 12.5 Documentation" from OpenEdge Documentation Archive and see "Intelligent compilation" in Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge Online Help.

Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge now supports advance tooling features, such as finding references, intelligent compilation, and so on, which significantly improve the efficiency of developers. To support these features, the Developer Studio analyzes all project files in your workspace and creates a metadata for every project by using the newly introduced Initialize OpenEdge Tooling process. The initialization process creates metadata of every project in your workspace at {workspace-dir-path}/.metadata/.plugins/com.openedge.pdt.project/{project-name}.

Based on the composition of your ABL projects and the extent of tooling support requirements, you can set the initialization mode for your projects.

For more information, download "OpenEdge 12.6 Documentation" from OpenEdge Documentation Archive and see "Developer features of Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge" in Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge Online Help.

You can now use Apache^® Kafka^® with OpenEdge. Kafka is an open-source, distributed, event-streaming platform, widely used across many industries and organizations. It provides near real-time data capture from sources such as databases, software applications, sensors, mobile devices, and cloud services. In this release, OpenEdge provides the new OpenEdge.Messaging API to send messages to a Kafka cluster (via a Kafka producer) and receive messages from a Kafka cluster (via a Kafka consumer). See the Use Apache® Kafka® with Progress® OpenEdge® guide for information on Kafka concepts, setup, client producers, client consumers, and troubleshooting tips.

You can now debug problems, such as performance issues or site failures, in your ABL HTTP client program's communication with a web server, by implementing HTTP tracing and analyzing the resultant tracing data.

To learn more about HTTP tracing in ABL, see Debug problems using ABL HTTP tracing.

PAS for OpenEdge now supports automated deployment of the _oepingService.handlers file using an ABL service package called oepingWebService.oeds.

This support allows you to deploy the OE PING service for the WEB transport without manually configuring your openedge.properties file or creating a _oepingService.handlers file.

>cd $CATALINA_BASE
>bin/tcman deployablsvc -oeds {DLC}/servers/pasoe/extras/oepingWebService.oeds -webapp {webapp-name} -ablapp {ablapp-name}

>pasman -i {instance-name} deployablsvc -oeds {DLC}/servers/pasoe/extras/oepingWebService.oeds -webapp {webapp-name} -ablapp {ablapp-name}

For more information, see ABL application PING service.

For a non-indexed field, database administrators can now add a Drop Field operation to the Post Deploy section of the Delta.df file and help in reducing the database downtime during upgrades that require schema changes. The Post Deploy section of the Delta.df file contains all online disruptive schema change operations, which are applied to the production system after confirming that the objects are not used in any other version of the running application. If you have more than one Drop Field operations for non-indexed fields, then only the first operation is added to the Post Deploy section and the remaining operations are added to the Offline section of the Delta.df file. Similarly, the Drop Field operation for an indexed field remains in the Offline section.

For more information, see Dump incremental delta.df supporting online schema changes.

In Pro2 6.3, with the new Table List function, you can enter the table names as a comma-separated list to map or unmap tables, fields, and CDC policies from the source and target databases. This function works by taking the table names as the input from the source database.

You can now upgrade your OpenEdge Command Center server and agents to the latest version by using the respective installers, after you download their latest version from the Progress Software Download Center. Both these installers detect their older installation on the computer and install the new version based on the existing configurations.