My go-to has been Qlik Sense. I have enjoyed using Qlik Sense. Tableau is good also. Compared to Tableau, I’ve found Qlik to be faster and more responsive to slicing and dicing data.
IMO there has to be a solid business case to switch a database layer. If MySQL serves your business well, I’d not switch. I like MySQL and PostgreSQL. I’ve used both. I felt the decision to go one way or the other depended more on how the company could maintain it after all decision makers were no longer there. Where MySQL was chosen, getting tooling and support from Oracle or Percona was seen as the biggest benefit. Where PostgreSQL was chosen, quality optimizer and open source was seen as the biggest benefit.
I’d highly recommend to try PostgreSQL yourself and learn it’s config, permissions, replication, administration and querying capabilities. You’ll appreciate PostgreSQL’s casting with :: for example. If you had to start from scratch, you’ll be better informed about PostgreSQL and can include it in your selection process.
When we used MySQL, we loved the ease of replication and tooling such as Monyog/Webyog/Workbench. When we used PostgreSQL, we loved the query optimizer and JSON functions.
OpenEdge is their DB. It has 1 storage engine but 2 ways to get to it: SQL and 4GL. If you write SQL, OpenEdge is relational DB. If you write 4GL, OpenEdge isn't relational unless you write relationship on application layer. Yeah, it's interesting.
4GL (aka ABL or Advanced Business Language) is the language that works best with OpenEdge. You write 4GL code, compile and deploy it to a specialized Tomcat environment called PASOE (Progress Application Server for Open Edge). It's their container to run 4GL apps.
WebSpeed is their middleware to serve APIs using 4GL code. Companies stuck in the desktop world are using WebSpeed to refactor their code and expose business logic to other languages through WebSpeed API middleware.
They acquired Telerik some time back. Those controls are used by .NET web devs and desktop devs. They are cool controls. I like them. Telerik controls are also integrated with their 4GL desktop environment. Kendo UI are tools/controls for the web and are pretty neat as well. Fiddler is also their product now.
DataDirect is a suite of connectors to make it easy for devs to connect between different DBs from 4GL, and for other languages to use DataDirect to connect to OpenEdge or call 4GL methods.
Corticon is their version of Dell Boomi or Alooma or Prismatic.io. It's a tool to run business processes with no code or low code. It's neat if you have tech savvy business analysts who like to use tools like that.
Sitefinity is their version of WordPress/Drupal/content frameworks. Sitefinity has its place.
NativeClient is their product to build mobile-first application across various platforms. They whipped up a neat app at their conference and it really worked well. Yes, it may have been cowboy-coded a bit, but it worked as intended.
Now they acquired Chef. I am sure there was a demand for orchestration within their client-base. They are making improvements steadily. They have a strategy. They have a niche target market, primarily in LATAM and EU and less so in North America. They do not have a great version control, static analysis, dynamic analysis, orchestration tools. Companies like Intuit and Fiserv seems to have built their own ecosystem around 4GL tools, but many companies just have primitive means of development with 4GL, still. Progress is trying to stay current. Their customers are much slower at adopting to changes in engineering; perhaps what they have just works for them. Not sure.
Acquiring chef is a good move. I've worked with their products for 2-3 years. It wasn't fun. I don't like 4GL. I'd like if Progress made SQL a first class citizen and invite PHP/Python/Ruby/etc. communities to write code against OpenEdge. From a business standpoint, I feel they are trying their best to stay modern and relevant. They are acquiring products that are indeed making their ecosystem cohesive.
OpenEdge has pretty good SQL support. Progress management I talked to did NOT want to stand behind SQL for CRUD applications. They were OK with SQL's use for ETL and were adamant that OpenEdge should be used only with 4GL for CRUD application. I wrote several blogs to explain the cool CRUD apps one could write. I did observe that 4GL devs were very shy to use anything but 4GL to work with Progress. Yes, SQL is treated as a second/third class citizen even though I felt SQL was an exceptional way to use OpenEdge with other languages. If there were valid technical reasons to not use SQL, I didn't hear it from 4GL devs or Progress management.
To be fair, 4GL and OpenEdge work very well together.
> Progress management I talked to did NOT want to stand behind SQL for CRUD applications.
Of course not - the entire business model behind OpenEdge (which is far from "open") is to have applications built with their laughably irrelevant ABL/4GL language and only working with data in OLTP / one-record-at-a-time because that makes it almost impossible to switch to the conventional (RDBMS + web-service + frontend) architecture that the entire industry shifted to 20 years ago.
OpenEdge (nee "Progress DB") was a cool platform in the late-1980s through to the early 2000s because it supported IBM's AS/400, MS Windows, and Linux - with their UI system that let you design an input form once and have it magically work in text-mode AS/400 terminals and the Windows desktop - but the fundamental design of OpenEdge is still based on its AS/400 roots and it really doesn't work well with modern systems (e.g. it has this design with multiple "broker" processes which is a PITA to configure).
Their anti-open-source article on Progress' website that the GP post linked to was infuriating to read: it felt like the same anti-GPL propaganda that did the rounds around 2003 when SCO was claiming Linux contained their copyrighted code and Microsoft was astroturfing articles about the "risks" of open-source code and seemingly intentionally confusing people about MIT/Apache vs. GPL licenses. Le sigh.
At RAS, we are investing in making buying work comp insurance very customer-friendly and efficient. RAS sells Workers' Compensation (work comp) Insurance in the upper Midwest. We are headquartered in Sioux Falls, SD. We've been in business for 30 strong years. We have a great story; we have amazing people, customers and partners. We'll do that using technology as a corporate strategy. This position will continue building out our web application platform, internal automation, APIs and migrate from an older .NET stack to Python/Django. It's a very interesting field; ripe for disruption.
Tech stack: Python, Django, Vue, PostgreSQL, SQL Server and .NET
Much appreciated, darknessmonk; I didn't realize. Thank you. We're days away from moving to an improved site and hosting (sneak peek: https://dev.rascompanies.com).
