The Progress OpenEdge Pro2 Services team recently collaborated with ABC Supply to host a webinar titled, “Your Data Your Way: How ABC Supply Streamlined Data Access for Customized Reporting.” In the webinar, the team discussed the reporting challenges businesses face, the solutions available and a case study featuring ABC Supply’s use of OpenEdge Pro2.
The Reporting Challenge
Businesses often find that the standard reports provided by ERP, CRM or Supply Chain Management (SCM) applications don’t meet their specific needs. As companies grow, their reporting requirements evolve, necessitating customized reports. The challenge? Accessing all your data without impacting your application.
The What Ifs
- What if you could access all your data—and manipulate it—without affecting your application?
- What if you could use SQL Server, Oracle or another OpenEdge environment to develop your own reports?
Most businesses use SQL Server, but the principles apply to other databases as well. Once your data is in SQL Server, you can create views, stored procedures and use third-party reporting solutions like Power BI, Tableau and BI360, as well as any off-the-shelf third-party products.
The Problem
Untimely Data - Businesses need accurate, current data for decision-making. Nightly data exports often result in stale data by the next morning. Real-time data access is crucial but challenging due to differences in data structures and the need for continuous connection to your application.
Compliance and Security - Data export must be tightly controlled and encrypted to comply with regulations like HIPAA. Internal restrictions and additional layers of protection, such as TLS or SSL, may be essential to safeguard data.
Use Case
ABC Supply, founded in 1982, is North America’s leader in building material distribution with over 900 locations.
To support future growth, they migrated to a single modern ERP but needed advanced security for custom reporting. After some internal discussions and evaluation of other potential products, they decided to offload transactional data in near real-time to an external database using Pro2SQL, which identifies Pro2 replicating to SQL Server as a target. This made the transactional data accessible to their users and enabled their data teams to create secure reports and dashboards with modern tools and existing skillsets.
This move significantly reduced the reporting load on the ERP’s native database, allowing it to focus on transaction processing without impacting user experience. Additionally, the near real-time replicated data facilitated communication with external vendor applications when APIs were unavailable or under development.
Even during network outages, which can disrupt data replication, Pro2SQL continues queuing data activity until the connection is restored. Large replication events can be managed by scheduling updates after hours or using thread tuning.
Pro2SQL has hugely benefited their user base and developers, allowing them to deliver valuable functionality quickly. Progress’ Managed Services have been effective in tuning, monitoring, installation and support.
The Solution: OpenEdge Pro2
OpenEdge Pro2 provides near-real-time replication for OpenEdge users, allowing data to be processed and loaded into Oracle, SQL Server or another OpenEdge database. This minimizes performance impact on your application and helps keep data up to date.
Pro2 allows you to leverage the value of your data, overcome technology issues and provide flexible reporting options for all stakeholders. It provides accurate, near-real-time data to support better business decisions, tailored to match your specific needs.
Benefits of OpenEdge Pro2
- Configurable and Flexible: Optimized for production performance with minimal impact.
- Multi-threaded: Can handle high-volume updates by splitting tables across multiple threads.
- Scalable: Records create, update and delete events with minimal system impact.
Pro2 can be configured for various scenarios, including on-premises and cloud operations.
Sound interesting? Watch the webinar recording.
Jessica Malakian
Jessica Malakian is a product marketing specialist at Progress who focuses primarily on Progress OpenEdge. Jessica is a recent college graduate and is excited to begin her professional journey with Progress. Outside of work, Jessica loves reading and writing.