Application modernization is the transformation of a legacy application into a modern, cloud-ready business application that supports strategies like Software as a Service (SaaS), continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), and API-first development. If you are an OpenEdge solution architect or developer, you can jump-start your modernization process with OpenEdge 12—the most secure and performant version of OpenEdge.

Why modernize?

Over the years, Progress OpenEdge has helped manage mission-critical aspects of businesses across a range of domains—from ERP to mortgage loans to insurance claims to payroll. Many enterprises continue to use OpenEdge with little to no changes in their applications because applications built on OpenEdge are robust and require little maintenance.

However, with the rise of cloud computing, the technological landscape has changed dramatically. Customers increasingly want their applications to run online, be accessible on a variety of devices, and be available all the time. OpenEdge 12 comes with a set of features that are designed to help you adapt to these changes.

Before you get into the details of modernizing a legacy OpenEdge application, take some time to understand the key characteristics of a modern application, the OpenEdge features that enable modernization, and the typical modernization workflow.

Characteristics of a modern application

Modern applications are typically:
  • API-centric—APIs enable extensibility and scalability. By exposing parts of your application through individual APIs, you allow for easier integration with internal and external systems.
  • UX-focused—When everything is an API, front-end developers are empowered to design better user experiences.
  • Microservice-oriented—The application architecture is modular, distributed, and designed with an emphasis on scalability and performance.
  • Cloud-enabled—Applications can be delivered and consumed over the cloud, with the ability to add and release computing resources on demand. Monitoring tools enable you to track important metrics and configure alerts and notifications across your cloud services and workflows.
  • Continuously delivered—Applications can be containerized and built using a CI/CD pipeline consisting of automated build steps, quality gates, and security scans.

OpenEdge features that enable modernization

OpenEdge provides a wide set of tools that enable you to design and develop modern business applications. The key features that enable modernization include:
  • Progress Application Server for OpenEdge (PAS for OpenEdge)—Based on Apache Tomcat, PAS for OpenEdge provides a modern web server that is tailored to host ABL web applications.
  • ABL web handlers—ABL web handlers enable you to easily wrap your ABL code in RESTful APIs. An WebHandler is a service interface that uses ABL to transform HTTP messages into ABL and ABL data into HTTP.
  • Progress Data Object Services—A Data Object Service is a specific type of RESTful ABL service that enables you to integrate your ABL business logic with JavaScript Data Object (JSDO) client applications.
  • ABL improvements—Starting with OpenEdge 12, enhancements in the ABL language syntax make it even easier for you to write concise, readable code. For example, you can write VAR statements instead of DEFINE VARIABLE statements, use compound assignment operators (+=, -=, *=, /=), and resize indeterminate arrays at runtime even if they are defined with initial values. Additionally, you can use the new AGGREGATE statement to compute the average, count, or total of values in a database table field.
  • Database improvements—The OpenEdge 12 database server is multi-threaded and can handle remote client requests concurrently for improved performance and horizontal scalability. Many queries are able to be executed as server-side joins, increasing performance by reducing the number of records (and therefore the size of the data), returned to a client ABL program.
  • Support for Docker—In OpenEdge 12, you can run PAS for OpenEdge and an OpenEdge database in Docker containers, giving you the ability to set up CI/CD pipelines for faster deployment.