What's Next For OpenEdge?

OpenEdge 11.0 has been out for a while and the developers are working furiously on OpenEdge 11.1. But what comes after that? What are we doing in the next major release?

I can't tell you everything yet, but I do have a couple of things to share.

First is a new Eclipse plugin for the OpenEdge Architect tool. This new plugin is called the "Language Extension Module" or LEM for short. With LEM, you can add new statements and language constructs to the 4GL. This is accomplished in three phases:

• Using the "draw" tool, draw a railroad diagram (also called a bubble diagram) that defines the syntax of your new statement. You may also want to modify an existing language construct to enable use of the new element in an existing statement.
• Write a description of what the new language construct does.
• Press the "Add new element" button. Your new construct will be analysed and if there are no errors, a new shared library will be created and written to the $DLC/lib directory.

Once you have successfully gone through these three phases, then you can use the new language construct in your 4GL programs.

The prototype is nearly complete so LEM will be made available as a technology preview on PSDN in about 5 weeks. Because it is still a prototype, there may be some bugs and other deficiencies. Also, in the prototype, you must write the description of all new language constructs in French. We expect to support other languages in the final version.

Second, we are adding a new table type to the OpenEdge RDBMS: Imaginary Tables. The purpose of Imaginary Tables is to enable a much easier way to represent complex data types. We are in the early design stages of this exciting new feature and will be releasing details and functional specs in a few months.