Progress 4GL Development Basics

ABL (Advanced Business Language). Earlier known as Progress 4GL.

Even if you are a progress database administrator, having knowledge of progress 4GL language is an add-on advantage since even in your day to day database activities , you would find opportunities to run certain code snippets or write some procedure codes in progress for monitoring/troubleshooting etc.

Progress ABL is a strongly typed, late-bound, English-like programming language with growing support for object orientation. The compiled code is run by the "AVM" (ABL Virtual Machine).

Program files

Progress ABL code is normally stored in files with different ending depending on what they contain. The endings are optional but rather a defacto standard:

Filename extension	Contains
.p	A Progress program. Can contain several internal procedures, functions etc
.i	Include file to be included in other files
.w	A file containing a graphical representation of a Window or Dialog, WinForm-based.
.r	The compiled result of any file containing Progress 4GL. Called r-code.
.cls	A Progress Object Oriented Class
.wrx	A container for ActiveX data whenever needed (generated by compiling in "AppBuilder").