Technical Sessions – OPenEdge developer Conference

DEV-1
What's New in OpenEdge 10.1C?

OpenEdge 10.1C is the latest release and contains important new features as well as a myriad of bug fixes. OpenEdge10.1C advances the OpenEdge SOA capabilities in our four main areas of emphasis: business logic, integration, user interface and database. During this session, we'll describe the new features and the associated benefits at a mid-to-high level and recommend other related sessions you should attend for more information.

DEV-2
Making OpenEdge Architect Work for You

Time:

Monday, September 8, 2:00am–3:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom A-B

Speaker:

David Lund, Senior Training Program Manager, Progress Software

Have you recently adopted OpenEdge Architect or thinking about making the move? This session, for developers and development managers, will take a look at how to get started with OpenEdge Architect. Learn how to get the most out of this exciting integrated development environment. The session will review the concepts of the project-based environment and provide advice on how to configure OpenEdge Architect as a replacement for your existing development environment.

By the end of the session you will have a good understanding of what OpenEdge Architect can do for you and how best to get started using it productively. No prior knowledge of OpenEdge Architect is required.

DEV-3
Introduction to the OpenEdge GUI for .NET

Time:

Monday, September 8, 4:45pm-5:45

Location:

Pacific Ballroom A-B

Speaker:

Jim Lundy, Principal Product Manager–OpenEdge, Progress Software

This session is a great starting point for IT managers and developers who are just beginning to explore the OpenEdge GUI for .NET (formerly known as Advanced GUI). Through a combination of lecture and demonstration, you’ll gain an understanding of the OpenEdge GUI for .NET, the development environment and how the Visual Design and ABL code-authoring tools work. No prior experience is required.

DEV-4
Structured Error Handling in the ABL

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 11:15am-12:15pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom A-B

Speaker:

Sarah Marshall, QA Architect–OpenEdge, Progress Software

In OpenEdge 10.1C, Progress introduces support for a new error-handling model. Structured error handling leverages the object-oriented language features while coexisting easily with the error-handling model that ABL developers have used for years. It is useful in both object-oriented and procedural applications. During this session, you'll get an introduction to structured error handling as we describe the benefits of the new model compared to those of the existing model. We'll cover new syntax and enhancements to the language, and we'll demonstrate new capabilities for developing application-specific errors and consistently handling errors of all types.

DEV-5
Web 2.0 Distributed AJAX Applications – Combining Progress OERA and Open Laszlo

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 10:00am-11:00am

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

Geoff Crawford, President, Innov8 Computer Solutions, LLC

Rich Internet applications are becoming more and more common. Today's browsers are increasingly capable of deploying full Windows user interfaces with tabs, browsers and full MDI capability. During this session, you'll learn how a Progress-based OERA back end can be linked to a Web 2.0 user interface built using an open source development tool.

DEV-6
Architecting Your Application in OpenEdge 10

Time:

Monday, September 8, 3:30pm–4:30pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Joe Genovese, Solutions Engineer, Progress Software

Many of the key features of OpenEdge were added to make it easier and more productive for you to design and build a well-architected modern application. In addition, we have presented considerable material on the OpenEdge Reference Architecture (OERA) as a guide to thinking about application design issues. This session focuses on how to leverage several key product features to help you design a flexible modern application that follows the guidelines of the OERA. You'll also gain from high-level guidance on how to handle the challenges of adapting existing application code to a new architecture and new requirements. Programming experience in the OpenEdge ABL is expected, but no specific experience with OpenEdge 10 is necessary. Prior familiarity with the OERA will be helpful but is not mandatory.

DEV-7
What's New in the Object-Oriented ABL?

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 2:00pm-3:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

Shelley Chase, Architect–OpenEdge, Progress Software

OpenEdge 10.1A introduced support for object-oriented programming in the OpenEdge ABL. As part of its continued development, 10.1C includes additional OOABL features that ABL developers have come to expect from a flexible, modern language. This session explores support for statically defined members of a class, which will allow a class to maintain data and the methods that act on it, for the class as a whole rather than for an individual instance of a class (enabling native support for a singleton object). The session will also introduce features such as syntax, to work with classes dynamically and support for character to long char data widening between methods.

DEV-8
AppServer Mode Case Studies

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 8:30am-9:30am

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

Simon Epps, Solutions Engineer, Progress Software

Are you an OpenEdge application developer planning to start using an AppServer, or are you thinking of updating your existing AppServer application? If so, then this session is for you. We'll help you understand what the AppServer modes are and what design choices are available. We'll accomplish this by contrasting a common set of distributed computing design principles to each of the AppServer's operational modes. At session's end, you will have sufficient information to choose the best design and AppServer operational mode for your application.

DEV-9
Getting to SaaS

Time:

Monday, September 8, 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

Salvador Viñals, Strategist–OpenEdge, Progress Software

Software as a Service (SaaS), which is fundamentally changing the software business model, has architectural and technical differences when compared to traditional (packaged, on-premises) applications. Moving a packaged, on-premises application to SaaS involves much more than simply hosting a copy of the application so it can be accessed over the Internet on a subscription basis. There are some significant technical and architectural challenges facing those who want to become successful with SaaS.

After a brief introduction to SaaS, during which we cover business drivers, trends and taxonomy, we'll focus on some of the challenges you'll face and how best to start as you move a packaged, on-premises application to a SaaS-based application. We will focus on issues such as multitenancy, security, UI technology choices and provisioning.

DEV-10
Estimating Your Transformation – The Reality

Time:

Monday, September 8, 11:00am - 12:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speakers:

Stuart Roberts, Brenntag

During this session, you'll learn what you need to consider when estimating the time required to transform your application. "How long?" and "How much?" are key business and development questions. What techniques can be used to review your current application and estimate the time needed for transformation? Whether you're moving to a new user interface, separating user interface from business logic or trying to implement the OpenEdge Reference Architecture, we'll share some techniques from a customer workshop where the cost and duration of the transformation were estimated. This session is not to be missed as you get started estimating your transformation.

DEV-11
Embracing OpenEdge Architect

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 10:00am-11:00am

Location:

Pacific Ballroom A-B

Speakers:

Sandra Caiado, Sr. Solutions Engineer, Progress Software

If you're impressed with what you have seen so far about OpenEdge Architect, you may have already started to experiment with it. Perhaps you're using its advanced ABL editing capabilities or schema management or you've downloaded a few third-party plug-ins and are excited about the potential productivity gains of this new integrated development environment.

The problem is, you are not sure how to move from your existing development process and environment, and are asking questions such as "How do I customize the inserted code sections? What is this AST thing and how do I leverage it to parse code, read and write code sections like I used to in the AppBuilder? How do I intercept event hooks, such as open, close, save and compile files, and run ABL code from them? How do I integrate my ABL-based workflow application and tools into OEA? What APIs exist? How do I use them and what happens when I upgrade later? How can I, when I don't really know Java, do more advanced things such as building my own plug-in to provide additional wizards?"

Does this sound like you? Come to this advanced session on OpenEdge Architect to learn the answers to these questions and more. By the end of the session, you will understand what it means to get the most out of OpenEdge Architect. You'll discover how all of this is possible and how to get started if you know where to look for the information.

DEV-12
What's New with ProDataSets in 10.1C?

Time:

Monday, September 8, 3:30pm–4:30pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

Robin Brown, Principal Software Engineer–OpenEdge, Progress Software

ProDataSets, introduced in OpenEdge Release 10.0A, give you the ability to define complex business objects in your OpenEdge applications. With each subsequent release, we have added functionality to ProDataSets including added flexibility to the ProDataSet definition and XML support, largely based on customer feedback. In release 10.1C, several ABL enhancements were made, including recursive data relations, nonactive syntax on static data-relation definitions and support for updating a data source without before-image records. Support was also added for ProDataSet parameters across the Web services Open Client interface, completing the ProDataSet parameter support for all AppServer client types.

This session will provide details on the ProDataSet ABL enhancements, including code samples and use cases. Demos of Web services clients accessing ProDataSet data will show you how easy it is to incorporate ProDataSets into your OpenEdge Web services.

DEV-13
You've Got a Problem, Here's How to Find It

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 2:00pm-3:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

Peter Judge, Principal Software Engineer–OpenEdge, Progress Software

The ability to easily diagnose, troubleshoot and debug issues in your application is critical. Whether your client uses GUI, Character, WebSpeed or AppServer or is within OpenEdge Architect, the OpenEdge Debugger is there to help you debug problems quickly and easily. During this session, you'll see the debugger in action, and we'll discuss using it with the different flavors of the ABL client. You'll also learn about troubleshooting sticky situations in which you might find yourself and about the tools and techniques used for addressing those situations. Whether it's a memory leak, a performance problem or a general debugging situation, there are features and functions in OpenEdge to help you handle any issue quickly and easily.

DEV-14
OpenEdge Strategy and Roadmap

Time:

Monday, September 8, 4:45pm-5:45pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

Ken Wilner, Vice President of Technology, Progress Software
Salvador Viñals, Strategist–OpenEdge, Progress Software

This session offers insight into the mid-and long-term strategies planned for future OpenEdge releases. We'll discuss the business drivers that we see in the industry and that we hear from you, along with changes we are investigating that will help you reduce overall development efforts. Join us to see the exciting future of OpenEdge.

DEV-15
A Deep Dive into the OpenEdge GUI for .NET

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 8:30am-9:30am

Location:

Pacific Ballroom A-B

Speaker:

Shelley Chase - Architect–OpenEdge, Progress Software

One of the greatest benefits of the newOpenEdge GUI for .NET (formerly known as Advanced GUI) is the capability to add third-party .NET controls. Using both the built-in controls provided with the OpenEdge GUI for .NET and the set of Infragistics .NET controls that are available separately, this session will dive deep and include demonstrations of some common features that you can use in your applications. During this session, we’ll take a look at this set of controls—including the UltraGrid and data binding, the UltraTabbedMdi and window hosting, and the UltraTree and UltraExplorerBar. A basic understanding of the OpenEdge GUI  for .NET is required.

DEV-16
Tips and Tricks for Designing Your ABL Application for Performance

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 3:15pm-4:15pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Marv Stone, Solutions Engineer, Progress Software

During the development of Advance Business Language (ABL) applications, performance is generally an afterthought compared to functionality. Including performance in the application requirements and design can save heartache and delays at the end of the development cycle, when you go live. In this session, we will talk about techniques and design considerations when designing and writing the overall application as well as creating queries. You’ll learn how designing performance into your application from the beginning will lead to smoother deployments and more satisfied customers. This session will include code snippets and samples that will be made available on PSDN.

DEV-17
Using SmartDataObjects with the Advanced GUI

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 11:5am-12:15pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

Mike Fechner, Director and Architect, Consultingwerk Ltd.

You don't need to throw away all your SmartDataObjects-based business logic when moving toward the Advanced GUI for OpenEdge 10.2A. Understand how to leverage existing SmartDataObjects (static or dynamic) in the new .NET-based user interface. Use DataBinding to browse your SDO result set, including batching, filtering and sorting. Understand how to update your data within the SmartDataObjects from .NET Windows forms controls. The session will include a discussion about the presenter’s experience using the Advanced GUI to build an ADM-based rendering engine for the Progress Dynamics framework. Sample code of the Infragistics grid bound to a SmartDataObjects will be made available on PSDN.

DEV-18
Developer Productivity with the Roundtable Plug-in for OpenEdge Architect

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 10:00am-11:00am

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

Jeff Ledbetter, Roundtable Product Architect, Tugboat Software

The Roundtable plug-in for OpenEdge Architect 10.1C introduces powerful developer tools that complement software configuration management and increase developer productivity. Through feature demonstrations, you'll be introduced to new application development paths using Roundtable's database schema management and collaborative code-sharing features. Geared toward both existing Roundtable users and those wanting to learn more about Roundtable and software configuration management, this session also provides an overview of the latest plug-in features and offers demonstrations showing their use in a real-world development environment.

DEV-19
OpenEdge Info Exchange

Time:

Monday, September 8, 3:30pm-4:30pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom A-B

Speaker:

Salvador Viñals, Strategist–OpenEdge, Progress Software

Join senior Progress product development and product management representatives in an informal discussion that is bound to get live. This session will cover all aspects of OpenEdge. Come to this session to discuss current products and their near-term product plans, ask questions and find out what we're thinking about. This moderated session will include a very brief presentation followed by open, a frank discussion.

OPS-1
DBA 101 – How Healthy Is Your Database Today?

Time:

Monday, September 8, 11:00am–12:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speakers:

Michael Salsman, Solutions Engineer, Progress Software

Vital statistics on production databases are rarely monitored frequently enough to take preventative action on halting the impending crisis. This session walks you through the utilities available to monitor physical database limits, runtime memory and block checking, record validation, crucial database events that have occurred and the importance of checking the “recovery’ part of your disaster recovery plan. You’ll learn how to make these checks work proactively for you.

OPS-2
OpenEdge Management in the Real World

Time:

Monday, September 8, 11:00am–12:00pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Paul Koufalis, President, Progresswiz Consulting

Many of you have seen demonstrations of OpenEdge Management and understand the potential benefits, but nothing can compare to a session discussing actual production deployments at live user sites. Come and learn how to gain real value from OpenEdge Management. This session will cover the speaker's multi-phase implementation approach and includes many helpful tips and tricks extracted from years of experience

OPS-3
What's New in OpenEdge 10.1 RDBMS?

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 8:30am-9:30am

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

Wei Qui, Principal Software Engineer–OpenEdge, Progress Software

In this session, you will learn about the new features available in the OpenEdge 10.1C RDBMS. We'll show the impact that some of these new features may have on your production environment. You'll also hear how these new features can be used to increase high availability and improve performance.

OPS-4
Fun with Virtualization

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 10:00am-11:00am

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

John Harlow, President, BravePoint, Inc.

Virtual machines (VM) such as VMware and Parallels allow a single computer to host multiple operating system and application environments. For example, you can host a Windows XP environment on a computer running Linux or you can host a number of different versions of Linux. This can save you a lot of time and trouble when you are testing new releases of your application or when you need to use some program that hasn't been made available on the operating system you normally use. This session provides a guide to setting up and using VM Download.

OPS-5
After Imaging – New Features, Greater Flexibility

Time:

Monday, September 8, 3:30pm–4:30pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

Adam Backman, President, White Star Software, LLC

OpenEdge allows for the addition of extents to your database while it is running, and you can enable after-imaging while the database is running. All of this leads to more uptime for your database and greater flexibility in maintaining it.

This session will cover the implementation, care and maintenance of your after-image files. We’ll explore the OpenEdge utility and its implementation for automating the process of archiving after-image files. For users of older versions of Progress, the session will show how to do archiving without the aid of the AI archive utility. Additionally, practical extensions of the utility will be explored, including off-site archiving, log-based replication and archive cleanup. Database administrators with some knowledge of OpenEdge after-image files will benefit from this session. In-depth knowledge is not required as the implementation of the archiver and its extension will be discussed in a manner that is simple to understand and easy to implement.

OPS-6
Caring for an Ailing AppServer

Time:

Monday, September 8, 2:00pm–3:00pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Hugo Loera Chavez, Principal Engineer, Progress Software

OpenEdge developers and end users may encounter a situation where the AppServer works fine in the development lab but has problems running at the production site. This session provides information about how an AppServer physically interacts with its OS environment and gives examples of simple tools that you can use to understand why it is not working as expected. Walk away with a better understanding of how an AppServer operates, where to start looking for problems and what tools are available to help you.

OPS-7
Building and Deploying a Highly Available Application

Time:

Monday, September 8, 4:45pm-5:45pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Brian Bowman, Sr. Solutions Engineer, Progress Software

High availability (HA) is not just a database thing. HA starts at development time, not deployment time. A highly available application guarantees that the business will run regardless of what happens. Whether you are an architect or database administrator, this session will help you create a successful HA environment. We’ll discuss the four major application configurations and how HA fits into each. Explore building, deploying and maintaining for high availability applications. Discover best practices and worst practices for high availability as well as what tools and techniques there are today for building HA into your application. You will leave understanding how to build, deploy and maintain HA applications.

OPS-8
Effective OpenEdge Database Configuration

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 2:00pm-3:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom A-B

Speaker:

Richard Shulman, Principal Engineer, Progress Software

If you are planning to migrate to OpenEdge 10.x and are unsure of what database layouts work in real life or what process is required to move to this new structure—then this session is for you. We’ll cover the differences between Type I and Type II storage areas, as well as the performance impact of using these configurations. Discover the process used by our Professional Services team when they plan a database restructure.

OPS-9
Data Management and Platforms Roadmap

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 3:15pm-4:15pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

Tom Harris, Director of Product Management–OpenEdge, Progress Software

This session provides the roadmap and future direction for the OpenEdge RDBMS, DataServers and platform support. We’ll outline the guiding concepts, explore medium-and long-term technology investigations and provide insight into your influence on the evolution of the product. We will also highlight specific changes made to the product based on input from customers.

OPS-10
Managing Multiple Sites Part-Time – A Replication and OpenEdge Management Case Study

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 8:30am-9:30am

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Brian Bowman, Senior Solution Engineer, Progress Software

During this session, you'll explore the implementation of OpenEdge Management and OpenEdge Replication for a U.S.-based distribution company that is one of the country's leading technology distributors specializing in emerging trends across the IT, electronics, entertainment and gaming industries. Because this company brings in 50 percent of its revenue during the final three months of the calendar year, it is critical to the company's success that its systems never experience unplanned downtime. The company chose OpenEdge Replication and OpenEdge Management to meet its 24/7 business requirements. Find out how the company implemented these applications, what hurdles it faced, how it can achieve failover locally with OpenEdge Replication and how it is successfully managing its distribution sites with OpenEdge Management

OPS-11
OpenEdge Versus the OS Security System

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 11:15am-12:15pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Gus Björklund, Vice President of Technology, Progress Software

An essential component of any OpenEdge application's security is the OS's security system. Oftentimes this subject is a virtual black hole, from which no information escapes that can be used by OpenEdge developers and end users to enhance the application's security. This session will provide you with information about how and where OpenEdge interacts with the OS's security system. After this session, you will have a better understanding of where OS security fits into your OpenEdge application's security, how your application can benefit from it and how to get started using it.

OPS-12
A New Spin on Some Old Latches

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 2:00pm-3:00pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Richard Banville, Fellow–OpenEdge, Progress Software

In this advanced internals session you will learn how the OpenEdge RDBMS protects critical sections of shared resources and how this activity can be monitored and tuned. In addition, we’ll discuss, in detail, recent advancements in these mechanisms. Advanced users who monitor performance and watch for bottlenecks in their OpenEdge database won't want to miss this one.

SOA-1
Applied SOA – Building Out Your SOA Environment with OpenEdge

Time:

Monday, September 8, 2:00pm-3:00pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

Rob Straight, Principal Product Manager–OpenEdge, Progress Software

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an approach to developing and deploying an application as a collection of distributable, shareable and loosely coupled services. With so many possibilities for building your SOA environment, what is the best way to get started?

Come to this session to learn about SOA and how to get started. You’ll find out what a service is and how you can use the OpenEdge Reference Architecture (OERA) best practices to build one. This session will help you sort through and understand key concepts such as service requester and service provider. You’ll walk away with an understanding of essential technologies and infrastructure components such as Web services, enterprise service bus (ESB) and REST as well as the knowledge of when to use them. Through several case studies, you’ll learn how other OpenEdge customers built their SOA environment, what their goals were and what benefits they achieved.

SOA-2
Introduction to the Progress Sonic ESB Product Family

Time:

Monday, September 8, 4:45pm-5:45pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom C

Speaker:

Kim Palko, Senior Product Manager–Sonic, Progress Software

There has been a lot of press about the enterprise service bus (ESB) and its role in building an SOA infrastructure. Now it seems that every infrastructure vendor is touting an ESB product—whether real or not. During this session, we’ll cut through the hype and explain what an ESB is, what it does and how it works. We will examine how an ESB is a critical core component of your SOA infrastructure and how, in conjunction with the OpenEdge platform, it provides a fast path to SOA adoption.

SOA-3
Extending Your Application with OpenEdge Web Services

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 11:15am-12:15pm

Location:

Pacific Ballroom F

Speaker:

John Sadd, Fellow, Progress Software

Web services offer an opportunity to extend your OpenEdge application by integrating, into your application, services provided by others and by offering key areas of your application as services to others. During this session we will explore the principles and patterns that you should think about and introduce you to the support for Web Services found in OpenEdge.

SOA-4
Enabling Your OpenEdge Application with Web 2.0

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 3:15pm-4:15pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speaker:

Ken Wilner, Vice President of Technology, Progress Software

While there are many different perspectives on what Web 2.0 is all about, one of the key concepts that permeates throughout is that the Web is an application platform. In the Web 2.0 world, highly interactive, rich applications are no longer isolated in the back office, but are expected to integrate services and data from multiple sources—regardless of their form and where they are located on the Web.

Enabling your application to operate in this environment requires familiarity with several technologies and architectural approaches that are typically associated with Web 2.0. This session will give you an overview of Web 2.0, discuss how your application can participate in Web 2.0 and introduce you to a few of the key Web 2.0 technologies that you can use with your OpenEdge application.

SOA-5
Introducing Native Invocation with the OpenEdge Adapter for Sonic ESB

Time:

Tuesday, September 9, 3:15pm-4:15pm

Location:

Mediterranean Room

Speakers:

Dave Cleary, Principal Engineer–OpenEdge, Progress Software
Rob Straight, Principal Product Manager–OpenEdge, Progress Software

During this session, we'll explore the new methodology for creating OpenEdge AppServer services on the Sonic ESB (Enterprise Service Bus). Called native invocation, this new methodology, introduced in OpenEdge 10.1C, does away with Web services and SOAP and offers a more straightforward and efficient process for calling on OpenEdge services. You'll also be introduced to a new declarative approach in exposing OpenEdge procedures to the ESB. Discover how using source code annotations enables you to control what gets exposed directly from your source code; how these annotations, during build time, cause the generation of Sonic invocation files that can be dropped directly onto a Sonic ESB process; and how you can then use Sonic tools to map your parameters to and from messages.