By Kevin Newcomb, InternetNews.com
E-business technology provider Progress Software Corporation
(NASDAQ: PRGS) has launched a collaborative open source development
site: POSSE, the Progress Open Source Software Exchange, at
www.possenet.org.
Possenet.org is up and running and offering collaborative access
to the latest release, Version 9.1, of its Application Development
Environment (ADE) source code. Developers can deploy this ADE
source code for any current e-business applications they are
working on or sign up to participate in the development of
specifications for future releases of the ADE.
“We believe that Progress Software, our development community
and end users will reap the benefits of possenet.org, as it allows
Progress developers to participate fully in developments,
enhancements, customizations and modifications of their ADE, and
share ‘best practices’ of application development with each other,”
said Pete Sliwkowski, vice president, Progress Products.
Possenet.org is managed by CollabNet, which provides its
SourceCast platform for developers around the world to easily
collaborate on the possenet.org source code. SourceCast is an
integrated web-based environment that offers simple, powerful and
intuitive access to management tools including: code versioning,
source code browsing, automatic change notification, mailing lists,
issue-tracking and web administration.
“The unique working relationship that Progress Software enjoys
with its development community conveniently pre-disposes this move
to the open source model,” said James Barry, VP product and
strategy, CollabNet. “It has been very easy to move this
interaction between Progress Software and its developers onto our
SourceCast platform. The possenet.org environment allows developers
to use an open source approach and collaborate on building the next
generation of e-business applications.”
Progress Software is making the source code available for its
Version 9.1B 4GL-based application development tools, including
AppBuilder, which supports development of GUI (Graphical User
Interface); WebSpeed Workshop for development of Internet
transaction processing applications; SmartObjects, components of
the ADM, an advanced object-oriented programming framework;
Internet Component Framework (ICF), which supports complex
component-based business logic; Data Dictionary, which allows the
creation and maintenance of database definitions; TranMan
(translation manager), which facilitates the translation of
applications into other languages; and Results, an end-user
reporting tool.
“The powerful and flexible Progress 4GL is unique among fourth
generation languages in that it is actually used to implement our
application development tools, such as WebSpeed Workshop,
AppBuilder and the ICF (Internet Component Framework). Progress
developers are already experts in the language used to build their
development environment, and are fully empowered to take advantage
of a collaborative open source support environment such as that
offered by CollabNet,” Sliwkowski said.
These application development tools are also commercially
available in the Progress ProVision Plus product. Progress Software
will continue to distribute the ProVision Plus toolset commercially
under warranty and with full technical support.
Possenet.org provides the 4GL source code, the definition of
4GL-based file formats and the definition of language-independent
application programming interfaces (APIs). In addition,
possenet.org establishes the necessary facilities to make all of
the possenet.org source code available under the Possenet Public
License 1.0.