What is "progress-4gl"

Progress 4GL is a fourth-generation programming language, hence 4GL, event-based and proprietary. It was developed by the company Progress Software Corporation in 1984, initially for the operating system (y) Positivo with use in mainframes for large-volume data processing, as an alternative to other languages at the time such as Cobol, Adabas, Natural, Clipper, CORO, etc., because they required the programmer to write a very extensive code for any application. Also, an alternative as a high-performance, high-security relational database, embedded in a single product. Progress Corporation is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts USA, with branches in several countries. In Brazil, its representative is Progress do Brasil/SP. One of the most attractive of the Progress language is its portability and platform independence, it works on virtually all existing operating systems, such as: MS-DOS, Windows 3x,95,NT, UNIX, OS/2, Novell, VMS, Motif, Xenix, CTOS among several others, using the same source code.

The integration between language and database makes Progress an excellent tool for building any commercial application. One of the biggest drawbacks of Progress is the development layers - business rules, data and interface are fully coupled. The updating and distribution of the applications is quite simplified, a system can be totally centralized for access of several simultaneous clients, using the concept of "stand-alone" system, and updated at any time, partially or completely without generating any error or requiring a momentary system shutdown.

The Progress language is basically used for the development of enterprise management systems (Erps), which are integrated systems for a company’s control. It is primarily aimed at medium and large corporations due to the high financial cost of their licenses.