OpenEdge ABL helps developers to develop applications optionally using its own integrated [[relational database]] and [[programming tool|programming tools]]. These applications are portable across computing systems and allow access to various popular data sources without having to learn the underlying [[data access]] methods. This means that the [[end-user]] of these products can be unaware of the underlying architecture.
By combining a fourth-generation language and relational database, OpenEdge ABL allows the use of the [[Rapid Application Development]] (RAD) model for developing software.
==History==
The original Progress 4GL was designed in 1981 as an architecture-independent language and integrated database system that could be used by non-experts to develop business applications by people who were not computer scientists but were knowledgeable in their business ___domain. At that time, business applications were often written in [[COBOL]] (for machines like corporate [[IBM]] mainframes) and sometimes in [[C (programming language)|C]] (for departmental minicomputers running the UNIX operating system). When the IBM PC became popular, it developed a need for business software that could be used on those and other inexpensive computers. The Progress system was created to be used on both IBM PC machines running DOS and on a variety of computers that could run UNIX and [[minicomputer]] operating systems such as [[OpenVMS]].
