2025 OpenEdge World Tour & PUG UKI Meetup

Welcome and Progress Business Overview

Rupert Mayhew, Sales Manager

Progress Innovations: A Business Update

Progress is committed to creating innovative solutions that streamline app development, secure data and optimize performance. We’ll discuss how the acquisition of ShareFile enhances the Progress portfolio and how the Progress Data Platform harnesses AI for smarter decision-making. We'll also discuss the foundation of your business: Progress OpenEdge.

John Ainsworth, EVP & GM, Application and Data Platform

Elevating the Security of Your Business Applications with OpenEdge 12.8 

Are you confident in the security of your business applications? Learn how Progress works to keep you secure with robust identity management and data protection for data in motion and at rest. We’ll discuss why prioritizing security matters and how upgrading to OpenEdge 12.8—with features like Hardware Security Manager (HSM) and Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) —can help fortify your applications against emerging threats. Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance your understanding of application security and keep your organization ahead of the curve!

Soumaya Eddahech, Senior Sales Engineer

Uncovering the Hidden Value of Your OpenEdge Investment

Explore why and how OpenEdge serves as the driving force behind your business's success.  We’ll demonstrate how leveraging the full capabilities of OpenEdge 12 can transform your operations, strengthen security, boost productivity and foster long-term business growth. Learn how to communicate the value of OpenEdge to leadership and developers alike, maximizing its impact on your company’s future.

John Ainsworth, EVP & GM, Application and Data Platform

OpenEdge Excellence: Key Services for Peak Performance and Code Quality

Discover two essential OpenEdge services: OpenEdge Managed Database Administration (MDBA) and Application Quality and Security Management (Application QSM). MDBA services offer 24/7 database monitoring and proactive maintenance for peak performance. Application QSM services enhance the security, maintainability and longevity of Progress OpenEdge applications. Optimize your environment, elevate operations and protect your investment with these critical services.

Roland de Pijper, Senior Principle Consultant

Progress Update and Intro

Rupert Mayhew, Sales Manager

Guest Speaker - Making Data Driven Decisions Under Pressure

Ruth Buscombe is one of Formula 1’s most highly respected race strategists. Her expertise lies in data analysis and race strategy management, critical capabilities for teams competing in this complex, data-driven sport. Read more about Ruth.

JUST TELL ME WHAT THE [BEEEEP] PARAMETER VALUE SHOULD BE !#@$%^!!

People wish that there were magic values for all the DB startup parameters. This session will get as close as possible, and give simple, easy-to-follow explanations and instructions on how to figure out the ones that are not one-size-fits-all.

Paul Koufalis, ProTop

A Year of Change: Democratising Large Language Models and Preparing for the Future

In the past year, the landscape of Large Language Models (LLMs) has undergone a remarkable transformation, marked by advancements in accessibility and innovation. In a follow up to our presentation at last year's PUG, this year we delve into how LLM technology has been democratized, enabling businesses of all sizes to leverage its potential.

Drawing on real-world examples, we will explore the practical challenges of integrating LLMs into business software, such as data privacy, scalability, and user adoption, alongside actionable strategies to overcome them. The presentation also looks to the future, highlighting emerging trends, including multimodal models, domain-specific applications, and expanding collaboration between human and AI, offering a glimpse into how these advancements will continue to shape business technology.

Join us for an engaging session offering fresh insights, practical solutions, and a clear roadmap to seamlessly integrate the next wave of AI innovation into your OpenEdge architecture.

Nick Finch, InMyData 

The SmartComponent Library

In this session we’ll provide an overview of the SmartComponent Library framework – the full-stack framework for OpenEdge application modernization.

We’ll highlight features such as the exposing and consuming RESTful service as well as features to refactor existing ABL applications.

Mike Fechner, Consultingwerk

Understanding PASOE: A Beginner's Guide to the Application Server

This session serves as an introduction to the “new” Application Server, designed specifically for beginners. It will provide a comprehensive overview of the product´s architecture, covering essential administration routines, configuration, and log files. You will also gain insight into the different  “transports”  available, how various types of clients connect to the AppServer, and the process of execution backend code. This is a must-attend session for anyone looking to understand the fundamentals of the Application Server and how it integrates into your environment.

Mike Fechner, Consultingwerk

Essential toolkit for OE development

OEEssentials is crafted by developers, for developers, with the goal of boosting productivity and ensuring consistent, high-quality code. Whether you’re handling buffers, manipulating strings, or managing files, this library is your go-to solution for common development challenges. 

See: https://github.com/wayfarero/OEEssentials

Virgil Pal, Wayfare

AI for OpenEdge: Embed Intelligence in Your Applications with Ease

Empower your OpenEdge applications with AI-driven analytics—quickly, easily, and without the complexity of building from scratch. In this commercial session, we’ll introduce inmydata’s OEM program, designed to help developers seamlessly embed conversational AI and advanced analytics into their applications.

We’ll demonstrate how to integrate AI-powered insights into both GUI and web-based OpenEdge applications, providing a fast-track solution for delivering natural language queries, automated insights, and operational dashboards. By leveraging our platform, OpenEdge developers can add high-value AI capabilities to their software with minimal effort, making their applications smarter and more competitive.

Join us to discover how easy it is to future-proof your OpenEdge solutions with inmydata and start delivering AI-powered features to your users today.

Nick Finch, InMyData 

VS Code for OpenEdge - New and noteworthy • Gilles Querret • Riverside Software

LSP, DAP: Behind these two acronyms lie the protocols that have made VS Code so successful: the Language Server Protocol and the Debug Adapter Protocol.

VS Code is currently the most popular code editor, and we will demonstrate how to use it to develop OpenEdge applications in a modern environment, whether on Windows or Linux, locally or remotely, using Progress containers for PASOE, or more traditionally with  AppBuilder or character-based applications.

We will also explore how to use the Language Server and Debug Adapter outside of VS Code, with tools like NeoVim, for example.

Gilles Querrett, Riverside Software

The Browser Within Your GUI: Seamlessly Integrating Modern Web Browsers into Your OpenEdge Application

Are you looking to embed a modern browser, such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, into your GUI application? Do you need to integrate a data-warehouse portal or connect your Progress GUI application code and new web application components? Are you focused on ensuring a smooth transition path to your users?

In this session, we`ll explore how to integrate a modern web browser into an OpenEdge GUI application. You`ll discover how browser-based components and desktop windows can interact seamlessly, whether directly within the client or through a messaging infrastructure.

Additionally, we`ll cover strategies to eliminate duplicate logins between desktop and web application, ensuring a unified and user-friendly experience.  This session is perfect for those looking to modernize their applications and bridge the gap between traditional and web-based components. 

Mike Fechner, Consultingwerk

Top Ten Reasons Why You Need ProTop Monitoring and Alerting

Nearly 10,000 OpenEdge databases and related components are being monitored today by ProTop… but not yours. Why not? “We haven’t had a crash in 11 years, 6 months and 22 days!!” Your home hasn’t burned down either, and yet you still check your smoke detector batteries!

So why aren’t you already using ProTop!?! Why not protect the most important IT system responsible for running your entire business? 

In this session, I will share with you the top ten reasons why businesses just like yours rely on ProTop Monitoring and Alerting.

Paul Koufalis White Star Software

Leveraging modern programming techniques in your legacy application

Over recent years, Progress have added many features to ABL. Sometimes it can be a struggle to see how these can be leveraged without having to do a full rewrite of your application. But a lot of the features can be simply used to improve your app. We will look at many aspects such as Object-Oriented programming, including static classes, overloading and enums, as well as taking a look at other cool features such as the Json Object Model and HTTP clients. By the end of this session, you should be more confident about taking some of these techniques and implementing them within your procedural application.

James Palmer, Vertu Motors

Database Performance Tuning for...Programmers

A joke take on the dummy series of books, and a nice segway from/to the "Just tell me..." session above, this presentation will explain the fundamentals of DB performance tuning, and will explain the fundamental differences between read vs write tuning activities. My expectation is to provide easy to follow instructions that people can immediately use in their environments.

Paul Koufalis, ProTop

Supercharge your application with powerful and secure financial reporting, ad-hoc reporting, and dashboards

Would you like to increase income from existing customers and make your application more attractive to new customers? Cyberquery can seamlessly integrate feature rich reporting into your application.

Do your customers struggle to produce accurate, consistent, fast, high quality and timely financial reports? Our powerful, interactive financial report writer puts financial reporting back into the hands of Finance.

Are your customers looking to create high quality, ad-hoc reports, and dashboards? Cyberquery offers a rapid development solution, freeing up your developers to focus on application development rather than reports.

Please join us for this presentation or visit our stand to register for our follow up webinars.

Dave Darby (Senior Consultant), Steven Oakes (Customer Accounts Manager), Jon Black (FRW Product Manager)