What's New in OpenEdge 12.8

Today, many ABL applications leverage dynamic programming to dynamically fetch records using methods of the Buffer object handle. Earlier, ABL Developers had to implement complex techniques to export and import data in a flexible and standard format.

In this release, four methods are introduced to support the export and import of data. The primary benefit of these methods over the existing IMPORT and EXPORT statements is that you do not need to know the table names ahead of time. The BUFFER-EXPORT() and BUFFER-IMPORT() methods export and import all the fields in a table, respectively, unless you specify a parameter with a list of fields to exclude. The BUFFER-EXPORT-FIELDS() and BUFFER-IMPORT-FIELDS() methods are similar but require that you supply a list of fields to include. With these four methods, the ABL Developer has full control over exporting and importing fields in a table. Using these built-in methods can save development time, simplify code, and potentially improve an application’s performance.

The Oracle database considers both zero-length (empty) strings and NULL values to be identical. However, the OpenEdge Oracle DataServer inserts a zero-length string as a single-space character when migrating data from an OpenEdge database to an Oracle database. Therefore, the Oracle database stores zero-length string values ("") as single-space characters (" ") and unknown values (?) as NULL. This default behavior of the DataServer causes issues when data is migrated from an OpenEdge database to an Oracle database—the Oracle database-accessing applications are required to regard zero-length string and NULL identically.

For more information about using the PRGRS_MAP_EMPTY_NULL option of the DataServer, see Unknown Value and Zero-length character strings.

In this release, you can mark all " "Character-string literals in your code as untranslatable, using the DEFAULT-UNTRANSLATABLE compiler option in ABL or the -defuntrans startup parameter. This feature can benefit single-language applications, allowing the compiler to concatenate untranslatable literal character strings with no-string attributes at compile time instead of at runtime, slightly improving the performance. Using the DEFAULT-UNTRANSLATABLE option on the COMPILE statement or the -defuntrans startup parameter for the session is equivalent to using the :U syntax on all literal character strings (if no other attributes are specified). Not having to specify the :U syntax makes your code less verbose.

For more information, see the DEFAULT-UNTRANSLATABLE option description of the COMPILE statement and Default Untranslatable (-defuntrans).

Since OpenEdge release 12.0, Progress stopped shipping the 32-bit OpenEdge Studio, which included the Data Dictionary, Data Administration, Results, and Audit Policy Maintenance tools. In this release, the Data Dictionary, Data Administration, and Audit Policy Maintenance tools have been added to the 32-bit 4GL Development System (these tools are already present in the 64-bit 4GL Development System). Additionally, the Results toolhas been added to both, the 32-bit and 64-bit 4GL Development System.

For more information, see .NET project type, Create a .NET project, and Migrate a .NET Framework project to .NET project.

Prior to this release, the OpenEdge WebClient was delivered as a .exe package. Now, it is delivered as a lightweight .msi package with a reduced footprint and excludes any unnecessary files. The Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) package for OpenEdge WebClient is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions in the Progress Software Download Center.

For more information, see Run the Microsoft Windows Installer for OpenEdge WebClient.

The ABLUnit framework previously used the -debugAlert startup parameter as a debugging option to keep generated XREF files on the file system, allowing a developer to examine the files if necessary. As of 12.8.2, the ABLUnit framework no longer depends on that startup parameter to signal the use of debugging actions, and instead makes use of a new debug option when supplying a JSON configuration file. For more information, see Run test cases from the command prompt in Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge Online Help.

Generative AI has become popular and evolved with the availability of various versions of language-specific Large Language Models (LLM). Based on machine learning, the generative AI creates code, text, and images. Most IDEs have integrated an AI coding assistant designed to help the developer write, review, debug, and optimize their code.

The AI Coding Assistant plugin with Developer Studio is available as a downloadable plugin. You can download the AssistAI-ChatGPT-PDSOE-Plugin-<oe-version>.zip file from the Progress Electronic Software Download (ESD) center and install it in the Developer Studio to assist ABL developers generate ABL code snippets. This integration eliminates the need for the ABL developer to switch context between their browser and IDE, and significantly improves the productivity of the ABL developer with their coding activity.

For more information, see Use AI Coding Assistant with Developer Studio, Install AI Coding Assistant with Developer Studio, Enable AI Coding Assistant with Developer Studio, Use ChatGPT view, Discuss code using AI Coding Assistant with Developer Studio, and Uninstall AI Coding Assistant with Developer Studio.

In this release, OpenEdge introduces the ability to identify and diagnose memory consumption issues in your ABL code using memory profiling. When memory profiling is enabled, the AVM generates recordings (.oemp report files) to help you analyze the captured memory usage data. Recording snapshots can be generated automatically at a certain cadence or programmatically in your code.

To enable memory profiling, use the Profile Memory (-profileMemory) startup parameter. This parameter takes a configuration file as input.

To support memory profiling, ABL introduces a new class, property, and methods:

• Progress.Profiler.MemoryProfiler class
• Enabled property
• GetOutputFileName( ) method
• TakeSnapshot( ) method

For more information on memory profiling, see Profile memory in Troubleshoot ABL Applications.

The OpenEdge Memory Profiler is a powerful, standalone memory analysis tool designed to help ABL developers proactively analyze memory usage and optimize application performance. Delivered as a self-contained PAS for OpenEdge instance beginning with OpenEdge Release 12.8.9, the tool simplifies installation through a script-based setup and provides a browser-based dashboard for visualizing memory trends, analyzing object-level memory consumption, and identifying excessive memory usage.

This tool addresses a long-standing challenge faced by ABL developers, which is diagnosing and resolving memory-related issues such as excessive consumption, which often lead to degraded performance, system instability, and prolonged debugging cycles. By offering a user-friendly interface, the profiler empowers developers to self-diagnose problems, reducing reliance on technical support and significantly lowering the mean time to resolution (MTTR).

For more information, see Use the OpenEdge Memory Profiler Tool.

To monitor the ABL client, the System Administrators must enable OTel tracing within the ABL client and also configure the OTel Collector and the chosen APM tool. After OTel tracing is enabled, the ABL client sends trace data to the OTel Collector, which subsequently sends trace data to the APM tool for analysis. Traces can help identify problems, including performance degradation, and analysis of traces can help resolve these problems.

For more information, see Monitor ABL applications using OpenTelemetry.

In an environment where the ABL applications interact with other applications, System Administrators seek insights into the performance of the ABL applications to avoid any outages and performance bottlenecks in their applications. They can now monitor the PAS for OpenEdge agents using OTel tracing and analyze their performance using an APM tool of choice. Based on this analysis, they can gain insights into potential issues within their applications.

To monitor the PAS for OpenEdge agent, the System Administrators must enable OTel tracing within the PAS for OpenEdge agent and also configure the OTel Collector and an APM tool. When OTel tracing is enabled, the PAS for OpenEdge agent sends trace data to the OTel Collector, which subsequently sends trace data to the APM tool for analysis. Traces can help identify problems, including performance degradation and analysis of traces can help resolve these problems.

For more information, see Monitor ABL applications using OpenTelemetry.

With this feature, System Administrators can monitor ABL clients and PAS for OpenEdge agents simultaneously, using OTel tracing. They can view trace data that the ABL clients and the PAS for OpenEdge agents generate using any OTel-compliant APM tool and gain insights into potential issues within their applications.

For more information, see Monitor ABL applications using OpenTelemetry.

For more information, see OEMANAGER utility.

In this release, System Administrators can now get combined metrics for all Progress Application Server (PAS) agents and their sessions in one call for an ABL application. The metrics are available through OpenEdge JMX (OEJMX) and the OpenEdge Manager web application (oemanager.war). Previously, you had to issue multiple requests to the server to get the breadth of information needed on agents and their sessions. With this feature, you get more information with fewer requests to the PAS instance, and processing time on the client side is reduced.

For more information, see:

• OpenEdge Manager: List agents with session metrics
• OpenEdge JMX: List agents with session metrics query query

Database Administrators can now run index checks using multiple threads to validate keys for each record in a Type II table, provided that the database is running. Using threads enables serial operations to run in parallel, improving performance.

When you run PROUTIL IDXCHECK, the index check option 2, Validate keys for each record, is selected by default. All threaded index check options use multiple threads automatically if your system supports it. The frequency of status messages has been reduced for threaded index check. Note that like other threaded utilities, threaded index checks do not support word indexes.

For more information, see PROUTIL IDXCHECK qualifier.

For more information, see PROUTIL PROBE qualifier.

To configure a database, Database Administrators can now generate a parameter file (.pf) at runtime. They can use this file directly, without additional editing, to restart the database with the same configuration settings as the previously-running system. For example, a Database Administrator regularly uses a .pf file with the -B parameter set to value 100 and later, while the database is running, they use the INCREASETO command to set -B to 1000. If they restart the database, which uses the same .pf file, the -B value is again 100.

The benefit of this feature is that Database Administrators do not have to record or remember the changes made to the database configuration. As newer OpenEdge releases allow Database Administrators to do more operations without stopping the database, preserving configuration changes becomes increasingly important.

For more information, see Generate parameter files.

The PROUTIL TABLEREORG qualifier lets you reorganize fragmented or scattered record data while the associated table remains accessible to Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) operations. TABLEREORG reorganizes the table according to the sort order of the index. Therefore Progress recommends that you use an index frequently used by the application so that the logical scatter is reduced when the application requests data from the database.

Prior to this release, this utility required that you specify an active unique index. However, for the best performance, it is preferable to reorganize by the most-used index, which may not be unique. As of this release, non-unique indexes are allowed for the USEINDEX parameter.

For more information, see PROUTIL TABLEREORG qualifier.

For more information, see User index activity (_UserIndexStat), User LOB activity (_UserLOBStat), and User table activity (_UserTableStat).

Database Administrators frequently monitor database buffer reads and if the buffer hit ratio is low, they may increase the size of the buffer pool (-B). They may also designate a private buffer pool (-Bp) for a time-consuming job, such as populating a data warehouse or executing a slow-performing request. When using private buffers, the Virtual System Tables (VST) for buffer impacts does not differentiate between -Bp and -B OS-reads. In this scenario, a Database Administrator who observes a low buffer hit rate can continue to increase -B without seeing any improvement.

This new feature adds -Bp fields to the new Private Buffer Activity VST called _ActPrivBuffer. This VST separates logical and OS-reads generated from a private buffer pool from those generated when reading from the primary or alternate buffer pools. The updated PROMON Buffer Cache Activity display now tracks the logical and OS-reads generated from a private buffer pool in separate counters and shows them with the private buffer pool hit ratio percentage. Database Administrators can now have a better understanding of the buffer hit rate and avoid making unproductive adjustments.

Reducing the time needed for the backup operation helps shorten outages. This release offers new options for the PROBKUP utility that speed up backup operations while the database is running.

Progress strongly recommends that you back up an original database before performing any repair work on it, to have a fallback if the repair renders the database unusable. When the database is repaired and deemed viable, you should back up that version of the database before putting it into production.

For more information and recommendations for running the new options, see PROBKUP utility and Run a multi-threaded backup.

If a record lock conflict occurs during table reorganization processing, the lock wait timeout -lkwtmo startup parameter is applied. For PROUTIL TABLEREORG, the default value of-lkwtmo has been reduced from 30 minutes to 10 seconds.

For more information, see PROUTIL TABLEREORG qualifier.

For more information about the IDataAdminService interface methods and examples, see IDataAdminService interface.

With DDM, only authorized users can view sensitive information while it is masked for others. DDM configuration uses Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to control the privileges granted to users for data unmasking. This technique facilitates the creation of new database roles and their assignment to database users, known as user-to-role mapping. This mapping allows determination of user credentials for accessing certain resources.

For more information, see Dynamic data masking in OpenEdge SQL server and Impact of Dynamic Data Masking on SQL constructs.

DDM enables security and DDM administrators to control which end users view sensitive information and mask it when viewed by unauthorized users. A mask is a format string representation that is setup against table fields to control how data is shown to an unauthorized user. Authentication tags help decide whether the user has unmasking privileges for a particular field.

This new feature allows the DDM administrators to run batch scripts to dump and load the DDM schema definitions from the command-line utility. Note that you can dump and load DDM schema definitions only if you are both, a DDM administrator and a security administrator. However, if the DDM and security administrators are separate individuals, only the DDM administrator can dump and load DDM schema definitions. ABL API is also made available to support this functionality.

For more information, see Batch dump ABL data definitions and Batch Load updated ABL data definitions.

For more information, see OESECTOOL and Install OESECTOOL.

OpenEdge uses the OpenSSL library for cryptographic services and SSL/TLS communication for various OpenEdge clients and OpenEdge servers.

In this release, the OpenSSL support has been upgraded from version 1.1.1 to a major version 3.1.1. As a result, OpenEdge now supports only TLSv1.3 and TLSv1.2 for all client-server communication and transport layer security implementations. The older versions of SSL/TLS (SSL v3.0, TLSv1.0, TLSv1.1) are no longer supported and are deprecated since the OpenSSL 3.x release.

For more information, see Supported protocols, ciphers, and certificates for OpenEdge clients and servers.

OpenSSL 3.1.1 uses the concept of providers and supports various providers. OpenEdge currently uses only the default and legacy providers. The legacy provider contains legacy algorithms, which will be deprecated in the future OpenSSL releases. Threfore, Progress discourages you to use these legacy algorithms.

For more information, see Changes with OpenSSL 3.1.x in OpenEdge.

In this release, you can use ABL structured error handling to catch an error that occcurs during communication between an ABL client and a remote server using HTTPS due to a failure at the TLS layer (SSL). To resolve this, the newly introduced error class TlsClientAuthenticationError isolates and translates common internal errors thrown by the TLS layer (SSL) failure.

For more information, see Catch TLS errors.

Starting with OpenEdge Release 12.8.10, the ENCRYPT-AUDIT-MAC-KEY() method has been enhanced to accept an Encoding prefix as its second parameter.

ENCRYPT-AUDIT-MAC-KEY ( key, prefix )

If the prefix is omitted, invalid, or unsupported, the AVM raises a runtime error.

For more information, see ENCRYPT-AUDIT-MAC-KEY( ) method in the ABL Reference.

.NET 8 is now certified to work with OpenEdge 12.8 on Windows for both ABL applications and .NET Open Client applications. .NET 8 is a long-term support release with end of support in November 2026. This certification ensures that ABL and .NET Open Client applications that upgrade to .NET 8 can take advantage of .NET 8 features and remain on a supported version of .NET.

For information on how to upgrade an ABL application to a different .NET version, see Adjust the OpenEdge installation to use a different .NET version.

For installation and configuration information for .NET Open Clients, see the .NET Open Client Support FAQ.

OpenEdge 12.8 introduced the ability to access .NET classes from ABL on Linux, allowing the same OpenEdge application to run on both Windows and Linux. Customers with cloud-hosted OpenEdge .NET applications can migrate to Linux, where hosting costs are typically lower.

On Linux, OpenEdge supports access to .NET classes from the character client, the ABL batch client, and the PAS for OpenEdge agent. GUI functionality such as WinForms is not supported on Linux. OpenEdge .NET applications without GUI functionality generally work on both platforms with little or no modification. To enable this feature, install .NET and use the .NET Common Language Runtime (-clrnetcore) startup parameter when running your application.

For more information, see Support for .NET in OpenEdge on Linux.

In this release, the PROMSGS files have been updated for 13 supported languages: Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Dutch, English (International), French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese (Europe), Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Europe), Spanish (Latin America) and Swedish.

The PROMSGS files allow OpenEdge error and informational messages to be presented in languages other than English (US). Since the last translation of the messages in OpenEdge release 12.0, over 1000 new error and information messages have been added in English only. For international applications, the translated messages will improve the user experience, enabling end users to understand what action they need to take.

For more information on PROMSGS, see OpenEdge messages and The PROMSGS file.

In this release, OpenEdge provides an automated and industry-standard way to document REST APIs that use the REST transport. The documentation that is produced is in JSON format and follows the OpenAPI Specification. This format allows anyone to understand the details of how to call the services. Prior to this, the only option was to view the documentation using an OpenEdge-specific JSON format. The OpenAPI JSON can be used by tools (such as Swagger UI) to view and interact with the services graphically. For more information, see Deploy REST services and OpenAPI documentation for REST-based services in Manage Progress Application Server (PAS) for OpenEdge.

The Progress® OpenEdge® MCP Server is a production-grade implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) open standard, enabling OpenEdge business logic and data to participate securely and predictably in AI driven workflows. By automatically transforming OpenAPI specifications and optional prompt assets into AI accessible tools at startup, the OpenEdge MCP Server removes manual integration overhead for developers and provides a turnkey foundation for LLM-powered solutions.

As organizations increasingly adopt AI assistants and agents to automate business processes, the need for secure and reliable connections to existing enterprise applications becomes essential. The OpenEdge MCP Server fulfills this requirement through a controlled, standards‑based integration layer that gives developers a predictable interface for AI integration, while enforcing administrative controls required for secure operations in enterprise environments.

For complete conceptual guidance, setup instructions, and advanced configuration details, see Use the OpenEdge MCP Server.

In this release, PAS for OpenEdge updates to Apache Tomcat 10.1.15. The Spring updates include Spring Framework 6.0.14 and Spring Security 6.1.4. These updates include new features, support for the latest specifications, and long-term support. These updates apply to the OpenEdge Authentication Gateway. For any service pack updates, see OpenEdge® 12 Platform Compatibility Guide.

For more information, see Tomcat, Spring Framework, and Spring Security FAQ.

In this release, the version of the OpenEdge Ultra Controls .NET license, which installs Infragistics Ultimate UI for Windows Forms, is updated to 23.1.20231.6.

Starting with the OpenEdge release 12.8.12, OpenEdge JMS Adapter and OpenEdge Adapter for Sonic ESB let you use Aurea Messenger 2025 R1 that supports Java 17. For more details, see OpenEdge® 12 Platform Compatibility Guide.

For details about OpenEdge JMS Adapter, see OpenEdge JMS Adapter.

For details about OpenEdge Adapter for Sonic ESB, see Use OpenEdge Adapter for Sonic ESB.