ABL(Advanced Business Language)

The cornerstone of the Progress® OpenEdge® development platform is its powerful programming language called the Advanced Business Language (ABL). The ABL is the only language on the market that has been specifically created to build end-to-end business applications including business logic, user interfaces and complex data management.

Unlike traditional third-generation languages (3GL), the ABL empowers application developers to manage relational data in a way that models business processes.

Here are a few more examples of what makes ABL stand out from other languages:

• Makes it easy to leverage business terminology and statements to quickly express rich business rules that are comprehensible by all.
• Provides unparalleled productivity gains because single programming statements in ABL can do the work of dozens and possibly hundreds of lines of code in a general purpose language such as Visual Basic or Java.
• Does not exclude other programming methodologies, and is not “pure OO”, and we view that as a good thing for our customers. ABL enables developers can combine and integrate classes with procedures and vice versa. ABL is the only business application's development language with this capability.
• Has built-in data awareness. The ABL is the only mainstream development language that provides built-in capabilities to access, manipulate and store data from different data sources and formats (including relational databases, XML, structured and unstructured files, user-defined formats, etc.) intertwining it with sophisticated business logic, making ABL particularly suited for world-class business applications.