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. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Rapid Application
Development
Progress Software Special Edition

by Paul Nashawaty

Senior Product Marketing Strategist

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
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Introduction

cloud-based approach with a Platform as a Service

(PaaS) platform that empowers you with the capability
to rapidly develop applications can help unleash your developer productivity and creativity while delighting your customers and employees.
In fact, recent industry research supports this claim by showing that 93 percent of the organizations that adopted a PaaS
approach experienced improvement of development whereas
95 percent saw improvement in overall deployment of new
applications. More than 50 percent experienced reduced
development costs.
Imagine the possibilities with a rapid application development
approach that empowers you to

Quickly create and deploy business applications that

easily connect to all your data and arent limited by
device or cloud

Rapidly develop, deploy, and easily host web and mobile

applications using a cloud-native, point-and-click, and
drag-and-drop development approach

Simplify the development, deployment, and management

of business applications to improve graphical user interface (GUI)-style developer productivity

Streamline the development and deployment of business

applications to unleash the expertise of your technical
business users, allowing them to co-create their own
apps and proactively solve your organizations most
pressing challenges

Free your GUI-style developers and technical business

users to develop applications without worrying about
infrastructure constraints or traditional development activities (such as build, compile, deploy, and version control)

Let your GUI-style developers and technical business

users get started with just abrowser and an Internet
connection

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Develop applications one timefor all your devices,

including support formobile-specificapplication experience without custom device code

Adopt a model-driven approach to simplify application

development that allows your business users to understand the business domain to develop the model and
automatically generates the user interface based on the
application model

Leverage a consistent set of back-end application services as the basis for your cross-channel development
(web + mobile + other form factors)
To help your business meet todays intense demand for applications, you need to understand the advantages of a PaaS
approach. Thats where Rapid Application Development For
Dummies, Progress Software Special Edition can help.

About This Book

Talking about rapid application development and actually
executing on it are two very different things. What if you could
create applications in days instead of months? What if you
could continuously and easily connect to all your data, without
complex reconfigurations? And what if you could more easily
manage and share your data? Thats where Rapid Application
For Dummies, Progress Software Special Edition comes in.

Icons Used inThis Book

Youll notice three icons designed to highlight special
information:

Flagging a tip is akin to kicking you under the table to alert

you so you dont overlook something helpful.

This icon helps you remember these important tidbits and

facts to store away for future reference.

This book was done in partnership with and on behalf of Progress

Software. This icon highlights stories of how the Progress
Software rapid application deployment environment has helped
clients develop solutions more quickly and with less effort.

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Chapter 1

Your Foundation to Rapid

Application Development:
Just the Basics
In This Chapter
Understanding rapid application development with Progress Pacific
Identifying todays application development business challenges
Realizing the value of a PaaS approach
Taking your business to the next level

hen it comes to application development, slow and

steady doesnt win the race. Whether youre an
experienced developer or a technically savvy business user,
you can benefit from adopting a rapid application development approach from todays next generation of Platform as a
Service (PaaS) from Progress Software.
Progress Pacificis a cloud-based Platform as a Service (PaaS)
that lets you quickly build and manage powerful business
apps on the web, any cloud, or mobile device. Using the
power of cloud services for rapid application development,
the Pacific platform can help create new opportunities for
you. Progress helps you use your existing IT investment and
extend your applications to move your organization to the
next level.
This chapter serves as your jumping-off point into the world
of rapid application development.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Riding theWaves ofChange

toTransform Your Business
Technology is at the heart of the epic changes that people
around the world are experiencing, including the way they connect, how they communicate, and the way they do business.
The business arena is now global, 24/7, and highly competitive for the smallest piece of market share. Innovation is a key
driver, but in business nothing remains static. As soon as you
come up with one phenomenal idea, theres pressure to anticipate what your company or your customers will want next. The
same holds true for business applications. No sooner do you
finish delivering a new app to the market, then the pressure
is on to make it better, faster, and more competitiveand to
then to come up with the next big thing.

To keep pace with todays on-demand and increasingly connected

world, companies need a simple way to create applications fast,
without relying on deep technical skills, expensive IT resources,
or long development projects. Applications must connect to critical information in real time. And to work seamlessly on the web
or mobile devices, you need flexible deployment options.
You can rely on cloud technology to help you meet and keep
ahead of the demand to deliver more applications for your
business. The rest of this chapter takes a closer look at what
cloud technology is and how adopting this approach can benefit your organization in the rapid creation of apps.

Getting onBoard with

CloudTechnology
You can forget about the old school development approach.
PaaS is a cloud computing approach that offers businesses
the foundation for a speedy application development solution. With its capability to provide infrastructure and software
on demand, as a service, the cloud gets rid of the potentially
slow and costly steps required to get software up and running.
At the same time, a cloud approach helps reduce long-term
maintenance and licensing costs while providing you with
access to the latest software innovation.

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Chapter 1: Your Foundation to Rapid Application Development

PaaS adoption growing briskly

Research firm Technavio projects
that the global PaaS market will top
$6 billion by 2016. The growth rate is
projected to be more than 48 percent

per year for the next four years.

Gartner valued the worldwide PaaS
market at $1.2 billion in 2012, up from
$900 million in 2011.

But building or migrating applications in the cloud can also be

daunting. Often, doing so requires a significant investment in
time and money to beef up infrastructure and developer skills
for cloud migration. You can also get locked into one particular vendor and then find yourself unable to expand to new
markets. And you can suddenly discover that the need to connect your application to a number of other systems outstrips
your capability to keep up.
The following sections explain what it means to use cloud
technology, how cloud technology can help your business,
how you can make your vision a reality, and how you can
overcome potential challenges to build your apps.

Understanding thevalue
ofthePacific platform
The Pacific platform creates a whole new world of enterprise
opportunities for you to pursueall inspired by the unique
capabilities of this new platform. But what is Pacific exactly?
And how can it benefit you?

Pacific is a powerful cloud-based technology platform that

can help dramatically reduce your total cost of ownership
(TCO)a financial estimate intended to help determine the
overall costby streamlining your application development
and simplifying your infrastructure.
The Pacific PaaS offers on-premise solutions within the
enterprise network, in the cloud (public, private, hybrid), or
bothall while providing you development and deployment
options.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Rapidly turning ideas

intobusiness reality
The Pacific PaaS provides an agile, cost-efficient application
deployment and development solution with high productivity
and high control optionsor bothfor all types of developers, including business users.
Pacific is comprised of the following key products (see
Figure1-1):

Rapid application development with Progress Rollbase:

You can develop and deliver web and mobile business
applications with minimal coding in this cloud-based
platform, reducing time to market. Rollbase enables
rapid application development, making application creation significantly faster than with traditional software
development methods. Business applications can go
from idea to reality faster with innovative point-andclick and drag-and-drop tools in a standard browser,
saving time and money while also providing deployment
freedom. Rollbase is so intuitive that even if youre not
a traditional developer, it can empower you to develop
and manage applications. (See Chapters2 and3 for more
information.)

Data integration with Progress DataDirect Cloud:

Optimize your business applications with real-time, easy,
secure connectivity to powerful data with this technology. You can gain access to sources of information,
such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, through
standards-based interfaces for use in your applications or
favorite Business Intelligence reporting tools. DataDirect
Cloud allows faster access and integration by managing
the complexities of database connectivity so that you
can focus on actually applying all of that valuable information to your business. (Check out Chapter2 for more
information.)

Data management with Progress Easyl: This data management tool helps empower your business with datadriven decision making and significantly simplifies the
process of reporting on your organizational data. Witha
design focused on simplicity and self-service, Easyl helps

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Chapter 1: Your Foundation to Rapid Application Development

users access, blend, and report on data, spanning many

different business applications and data sources like
CRM, purchasing, or a data warehouse, so that you can
share, sync, and collaborate with other users without
expensive data integration projects. (Head to Chapter2
for additional information.)

High-control deployment options with Progress

Modulus: Progress Modulus provides hosted or private
PaaS options for developers, enabling them to quickly
and easily deploy, scale, and monitor data-intensive, realtime applications using powerful, rapidly growing Node.
js and MongoDB technologies. MongoDB is the leading
NoSQL database system and is designed for scalability,
performance, and high availability.

Node.js is designed for easily building high-performing,

scalable network applications using the ubiquitous
JavaScript programming language. Through Modulus,
Pacific gives you options regarding rapid application
development and control platforms with easy-to-use
integration between the two. This expands your development pool because it means that all your developers,
regardless of their skill level, can participate in application development. They can choose whether to write
custom code or use a visual development approach for
any portion of their applications.

Business rules management with Progress Corticon:

Pacific also offers an industry-leading business rules
management system. Corticon enables you to identify,
automate, and deploy automated business rules and
decision systems in collaboration with IT, without the
need for expensive custom coding. (Go to Chapter2 for
more information.)

Traditional application development with Progress

OpenEdge: This proven technology is designed for traditional application development. Closely aligned with the
Pacific suite of products, its database can be used for the
backend for Rollbase. In addition, Rollbase and Modulus
applications can leverage OpenEdge business logic and
data for easy integration between new applications and
existing OpenEdge applications. This book focuses on
the Pacific platform components. To learn more about
OpenEdge, visit www.progress.com/products/
openedge.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Figure1-1: P
 rogress Pacific PaaS components.

Pacific PaaS offers a fundamental new approach that gives

businesses the freedom and the power to rapidly innovate
with new cloud-enabled applications to drive business growth
and expansion, increase revenue, and create differentiation
from the competition. Pacific powers the rapid creation and
deployment of robust business applications that are driven
by data and unlimited by device or cloud. Pacific gives you
the freedom to choose the data sources, deployment environments, and business logic that best fit your needs. In other
words, Pacific lets you drive your business, not technology.
Rollbase, part of the Pacific platform, is the technology that
also allows you to build applications for any mobile device
or cloud platform. For example, say that youre a worldwide
company building an inventory management system that
must be available in all your facilities. In the United States,
you could run that application on Amazon cloud. In Japan,
you could deploy the application on an in-country public
cloud. In Germany, you may want to run the application on a
private cloud. With Pacific, you can build applications for any
device and deploy, run, and manage the applications on any
cloud platform.

Solving your biggest challenges

withPacific
Pacific makes the entire process of developing, deploying,
and managing applications simple. Pacific generates rich user
interfaces automatically so you can concentrate on your app.
Templates and drag-and-drop tools make things even faster,
empowering both IT and business users to develop applications. Simplified connections to important information keep
your application in tune with your business.
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Chapter 1: Your Foundation to Rapid Application Development

With Pacific, your business is never held back by technology.

Developers and business users are able to dive right in and
design, develop and deploy ideas, and innovateall from
one platform with very little, if any, coding. Pacific helps you
tap into all your in-house thought leadership to differentiate
your business in todays competitive marketplace.

Comprehending thebenefits
ofthePacific platform
The Pacific platform can help your organization realize the following benefits.

Accelerate time tomarket

The advantage of a modern application development is the
immediate capability to turn ideas into deployed solutions.
Your customers and employees want to move from a What
if? to a Now I can mind-settoday, not tomorrow. Pacific
includes a rapid application development platform using
model-driven development that works within a web browser.
Using visual tools, both developers and business users can
build web and mobile apps with pointing and clicking of predefined objects or chunks of information and then dragging
and dropping requiring as much as 80 percent less code.

Quickly and easily connect tomobile devices

A simple one-click option enables you to mobilize your apps
quickly for mobile web deployment. Or you can build mobilespecific apps for any device through an intuitive visual interface. Pacific allows you to publish your application to app
stores for users to access in a familiar way. And with push
notification technology, you can increase and enhance engagement with your mobile app users.

Easily access and connect toall your data sources

Data isnt everythingits the only thing that matters
to users. With Pacific, your application can tap into most
information sources available in the cloud or on-premise to
develop automated, context-aware applications. It lets you
rapidly connect to all your important data sources, no matter
where they reside, through a single interface. Whether connecting to information in the cloud or on-premise or both, you

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10

Rapid Application Development For Dummies

can add new data sources without having to rewrite code. And
you can do both securely, without having to break through the
firewall.

Share and manage your data toimprove

andacceleratedecision making
You need to eliminate those individual silos of information
held in various business units that make it difficult to analyze
critical areas of your operations. With Pacific, organizations
are empowered to easily access, share, and combine data with
a self-service approach to data management.
Pacific gives them what they need, right when they need it to
quickly and easily build shareable reports from a wide variety
of data marts. This integrated data offers you a 360-degree
view of your customer, a more accurate measurement of your
marketing execution, and insight into the pulse of your sales
team to provide you the differentiation that you need to ignite
your business.

Using a Proven Approachto

Take Your Business tothe
NextLevel
Progress Pacific starts by assisting you on your cloud investment journey. With the companys extensive history in application development, Pacific understands this investment
and your desire to adapt applications based on your current
infrastructure and current needs. Progress has a comprehensive road map designed to help you identify applications,
and understand where they are today and prepare them for
tomorrow.
This journey requires planning and execution, which is where
you can leverage the Pacific platform to maximize results with
minimal impact. Figure1-2 shows you the stages that applications go through in the journey from on-premise to the cloud.

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Chapter 1: Your Foundation to Rapid Application Development

11

Figure1-2: E volving from on-premise to the cloud.

When partnering with clients, Progress uses a clearly defined

strategy and outlines the road map to success, as shown in
Figure1-3. You can use this phased approach, regardless of
where you are in your cloud investment journey.

Figure1-3: T he cloud investment journey.

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12

Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Dominating a ripe market by moving an

ERP application to the cloud: FreshERP
Imagine running a business that
requires stocking and emptying a distribution center the size of five football fields every single day, or taking
and filling orders all day across multiple countries on millions of pieces
of produce, or managing a fleet of
250 trucks transporting millions of
pieces of produce each week across
Europe. Thats the reality for many
of FreshERPs customers, which
include growers, cold stores, shipping companies, importers, exporters, wholesalers, and supermarkets.
The companys Fresh4Fruit ERP system
enables these global distribution organizations to optimize their operations
across purchasing, sales, warehouse
management, logistics, and customer
service. FreshERP recently migrated
its successful 30-year old Progress
OpenEdge-based ERP application to
the cloud, using Progress Pacific to
capitalize on the tremendous potential of the European SMB market and
to attract new enterprise-level customers with features, such as mobility
and Business Process Management
(BPM). FreshERP is the first to offer a
cloud-based solution to the industry
and anticipates the change will have
a dramatic effect on its business.
With Progress Pacific, FreshERP
looks for the following to happen:
FreshERP expects to double its
revenue by the beginning of 2015
as a result of using Pacific.

The company has accelerated its

time to market, migrating more
than two million lines of code in
just nine months with Progress
Pacific versus using IBM and at
ten times the reduced cost.
FreshERPs application can now
run on any server or operating
system, in the cloud, and on any
mobile devicesaving its customers significant time and costs.
The organization is extending its
footprint into new sectors and
plans to dominate the small-tomidsized-business (SMB) market
within the next couple of years.
Companies can be up and running on FreshERPs system
within minutes versus months
and at a much lower cost versus
with its competitors on-premise
solutions.
Heres what the owner and commercial director of FreshERP, B.V., said:
Progress Pacific offers the most
complete platform for the development and management of processdriven applications. Progress is a
one-stop-shop with a clear cloud
focus, offering an entire solution
stack . . . that we can leverage to
continue to innovate our application
and drive a competitive edge....For
us, Progress Pacific is like a vast
oceanwherever we want to go,
Progress Pacific will take us there.

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Chapter 2

Simplifying Rapid
Application Development
In This Chapter
Examining Progress Rollbase
Understanding cloud technology with Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Exploring the ins and outs of Progress Direct Cloud
Focusing on Progress Easyl
Using Progress Modulus
Driving decision management with Progress Corticon

his chapter explores the components of the integrated

Progress Pacific platform, including Rollbase, DataDirect
Cloud, and Easyl. Rollbase is the cornerstone of Progress
Pacific and provides an easy-to-use, intuitive, web-based console that lets experienced developers or technically proficient
business users rapidly build rich enterprise, web, and mobile
applications. This chapter gives you a look at how easy it is to
get started with Pacific to create powerful, data-centric applications that delight your customers. This chapter also looks
at Progress Modulus and the high-control Node.js capabilities
and the business rules management capabilities in Progress
Corticon.

Looking At Progress Rollbase

Rapid application development using Progress Rollbase
gives you an integrated platform for creating, customizing,
and sharing web-based business applications. Rollbase was
designed from the ground up as a web-based application

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14

Rapid Application Development For Dummies

platform for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and enterprises, as well as departments and groups within larger
organizations.
Rollbase applications run online in one integrated environment, sharing a common security model, data model, and
user interface. Any number of users in your organization can
accessanytime, anywhereRollbase as a development
platform and Rollbase applications. You dont have to buy or
install any hardware or software. The only technical requirements that your organization needs are an Internet connection and an up-to-date Internet browser.

Getting started is easy. The Progress Rollbase Application

Directory provides an online exchange where you can browse,
test drive, and install basic, prebuilt applications and application templates. They include a comprehensive CRM system, a
full suite of integrated HR applications (for managing employees,
paid-time-off requests, assets, travel requests, and expenses,
courses and classes, policies, and violations), and abug-tracking
systemand others are continually being added.

After its installed, you can customize any Rollbase application to meet your specific business needs, using easy-to-learn
drag-and-drop and point-and-click tools. After you become
familiar with Rollbase, you can use these same tools to build
your own custom applications from scratch, all without leaving your browser.
By design, Rollbase helps further streamline the development process while offering you flexibility and customization
options when building robust applications, including the following features:

Customizable UI (pages, menus, and portals)

Reporting (views, reports, charts, and gauges)

Workflow (triggers and actions)

Data integration (Simple Object Access Protocol, or SOAP,

and Representational State Transfer or REST application
programming interfaces or APIs)

Security and access control (roles and permissions)

Progress offers Rollbase outside the Pacific platform as well

for both hosted and private cloud environments. Private

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Chapter 2: Simplifying Rapid Application Development

15

cloud users install Rollbase development and runtime components on their own network. Visit www.progress.com/
rollbase for more information or call 800-477-6473 for more
information.
These sections take a closer look at PaaS and Rollbase and
Rollbase Mobile and how they can benefit your organization.

Getting the4-1-1 onPaaS

Progress Rollbase exemplifies Platform as a Service (PaaS),
where software infrastructure is provided as on-demand
web-based services. Some PaaS offerings enable programmers to build applications, without having to worry about
buying or managing any hardware or software other than
their own.
Rollbase takes PaaS to a new level with its easy-to-use GUI,
allowing you to strategically enable all your developers,
including experienced and your less experienced citizen developers (those developers who are less proficient in coding as
well as technical business users) to build and deploy custom
web-based applications in addition to these services without
necessarily writing much, if any, actual code.
Rollbase allows your business to focus on providing business
value to your users. It relieves you of the expensive, complex,
and time-consuming tasks of managing the underlying software and infrastructure.

Going mobile
Progress Rollbase Mobile is a tool for the development of
both web-based and mobile business applications. Using an
integrated, model-driven authoring environment, your company can enable your customers to deliver exceptional mobile
user experiences. The following are some of Rollbase Mobiles
features:

Develop apps in a class development environment. You

can leverage a single integrated platform through a web
browser to build the application model and web user
experience using a drag-and-drop and point-and-click
development environment. Progress Rollbase Mobile

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16

Rapid Application Development For Dummies

automatically generates all the back-end services that are
needed to support your mobile app.

Utilize the device-independent Mobile App Builder.

You can build mobile front-end applications compatible
with iOS, Android, and other operating systems because
the Mobile App Builder is completely integrated in the
Progress Rollbase environment. You also can customize
your applications to support standard technologies, such
as HTML5 and JavaScript.

Leverage existing assets. Progress Rollbase Mobile automatically generates the application services that form
the foundation for your mobile applications. For existing
assets and applications, you can leverage web services
and JavaScript Data Objects for easy interaction from
your mobile client.

Add complex business logic. Take advantage of business

logic that is hosted by Progress Rollbase Mobile or leverage existing back-end services. For more complex application logic requirements, use an open standards-based
development language (JavaScript).

Improve user satisfaction. Add simple data integration

to an even wider array of data sources. Now you can
push notifications to your application users and message an individual or an entire group of users based on
business rules you set. You can also empower users to
collaborate and report on their own data using Progress
Easyl. (Refer to the later section, Grasping the Basics of
Easyl, for more information on Easyl.)

Use hybrid apps. Support various types of apps without writing device-specific code. Build HTML5 or native
applications. You get a rich user experience and choice
of deployment options, including the capability to post in
Apple and Android storeswithout the hassle of building the same app over and over again.

Rollbase Mobile gives your organization the following benefits

as well:

Easily assemble, deploy, and manage mobile applications

including the entire application infrastructure.

Leverage on-premise and cloud-based data sources as

the foundation for your mobile apps.

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Chapter 2: Simplifying Rapid Application Development

17

Build powerful, visually compelling apps using a visual

developer and standard technologies, such as HTML5
and JavaScript.

Support HTML5 applications or native applications

using a hybrid architecture that eliminates costly device-
specific coding.

Provide an intuitive, native mobile experience using a

hybrid architecture that eliminates costly, device-specific
coding.

Knowing What Progress Data

Direct Cloud Is All about
Part of the Pacific portfolio, Progress DataDirect Cloud provides easy, lightning-fast connectivity to all your data sources,
including SaaS apps, big data stores, relational databases, and
more, using a single Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) or
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) driver, or an Open Data
protocol (OData)-based API.

DataDirect Cloud is instantly compatible with your business

applications so theres no configuration hassle. With its single
programming interface that eliminates the need to manage a
variety of ever-changing APIs, developers pick up speed and
range. Business users can get the data that they need for complex issues, as they need it. In other words, DataDirect Cloud
manages the complexities of database connectivity so you can
focus on actually applying all that valuable data to enhance
the value of your applications.
The following sections examine how DataDirect Cloud can
ease data connectivity and the different ways for connectivity.

Simplifying your data

connectivity
DataDirect Cloud simplifies access to virtually all your data
managed by cloud services, such as Salesforce.com, Oracle
RightNow, Apache Hadoop, and Oracle Eloqua, as well as your
on-premise data, regardless of the source. This capability

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

becomes crucial when, for example, your organization needs
to use a reporting application to predict travel budgets by
analyzing travel data stored in the cloud or needs to analyze
data for forecasting sales revenue from your CRM application.
As shown in Figure2-1, DataDirect Cloud delivers fast connectivity to a wide range of data sourcesall with simple
configuration instead of extensive coding.

Figure2-1: D
 ataDirect Cloud components and how they provide access to
cloud data.

Identifying components and

connectivity options
DataDirect Cloud includes the following components and the
different ways to connect:

The cloud connectivity service: It provides access to the

cloud data store. The connectivity service abstracts the
source from the target of the data, which allows you to
add target applications or swap them without changing
the cloud data store or the application using cloud data.

The optional on-premise connector: This feature allows

you to access data securely for supported data stores on
your local network without opening ports or otherwise
reconfiguring your firewall. The cloud drivers manage

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Chapter 2: Simplifying Rapid Application Development

19

communication between your applications and the cloud

connectivity service:

Progress DataDirect Cloud Driver for JDBC: This Type

5 JDBC driver enables Java applications to interact with
any supported data store and delivers the fastest, most
scalable performance.

Progress DataDirect Cloud Driver for ODBC: This driver

enables applications using ODBC to interact with any supported data store and delivers the fastest, most scalable
performance.

OData service: For mobile and web applications requiring web services, this service is available. OData is
a data-access protocol initially defined by Microsoft.
Versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 are released under the Microsoft
Open Specification Promise. Version 4.0 is being standardized at OASIS and was released in March 2014. This
protocol is designed to provide standard CRUD access
to a data source via a website. It is similar to JDBC and
ODBC although OData is not limited to SQL databases.

DataDirect Cloud offers standards-based connectivity to a

wide variety of applications, databases, and platforms. It connects your dashboard, analytics, and ETL directly to your
data, including (as of August 2014):

ADABAS

IBM DB2

Apache Hive

IMS/DB, IMS/TM

Cassandra

Informix

Clipper

Microsoft Dynamics

Database.com

Microsoft SQL Azure

dBase

FinancialForce

Microsoft SQL
Server

Force.com
applications

MongoDB

MySQL

Greenplum

Natural

Hadoop

Oracle DB

HubSpot

Oracle Eloqua

IBM CICS

Oracle RightNow

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

PostgreSQL

Sybase

Progress OpenEdge

Teradata

Progress Rollbase

Veeva CRM

ServiceMAX

VSAM

SQLBase

Grasping theBasics
ofEasyl
Progress Easyl, also part of the Pacific platform, is a new
kind of cloud-based data integration tool that empowers
your business to break open data silos, overcome integration
challenges, and combine and present data in meaningful and
compelling new ways. Easyl is a self-service approach that,
through a web-based console, gives you direct access to all
the data that lives throughout your organization, wherever
it resides. Easyl brings it all together to dramatically simplify the process by accessing, cleansing, blending, and then
reporting on it.

Easyl puts the power of data management, integration,

and collaboration into the hands of business professionals
throughout your organization. More specifically, Easyl enables
you to collate accurate, timely data to populate todays powerful visualization and reporting tools. It lets you create and
deliver accurate, effective reports and analytics to ensure
that your marketing and sales organizations run efficiently as
a fully accountable businessperformance, financial management, strategic planning, marketing resources, and skills
assessment. Easyl helps give you an in-depth view of your
campaigns, identify key trends from your prospects, and track
the full progression from lead to close. Easyl also can assist
marketing and sales operations teams use data integration
and data sharing to assemble compelling reports and help
them achieve their numbers. Refer to Figure2-2 for a snapshot
of Easyl.

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Chapter 2: Simplifying Rapid Application Development

21

Figure2-2: T he components of Easyl.

Choose from the following solutions to discover how Easyl

can solve your most daunting of data management challenges:

Easyl Solutions for Marketing Operations: You can get

a 360-degree view of your campaigns, identify key trends
from your prospects, and track the full progression
from lead to close. Easyl can help your marketing operation use data integration and data sharing to assemble
meaningful reports quickly to help them achieve their
numbers.

Easyl Solutions for Sales Operations: You can shine a

light into details about your key accounts, track the effectiveness of your team, and measure the sales forecast
and pipeline contribution by campaign. Easyl can help
your sales operation team function at full potential with
the power of data integration and data sharing.

Easyl for ISVs: You can build reports that span tenants
or provide your customers with the self-service reporting
that they need. Your application is just one of many that
your customers use. With Easyl, you give them the tools
that they need to correlate data and build reports from
across their entire application infrastructure. Easyl can
help ISVs delight their customers and build new streams
of revenue.

Easyl Solutions for Customer Support Operations: You

can highlight key customer issues, analyze ticket resolution times, and identify problems before they become
escalations. Easyl can help your customer support team
leverage data integration and data sharing to improve
customer satisfaction levels.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Eyeing Progress Modulus

Progress Pacific offers the Modulus platform as a hosted
service. Enterprises can also deploy it in public, private,
and hybrid clouds as well as in an on-premise infrastructure.
Modulus Enterprise is the first and only enterprise Node.js
PaaS available as a licensed product, allowing businesses and
ISVs to deploy next-generation apps faster and at a lower total
cost. With Modulus, your organization can spend more time
creating and modernizing apps and less time worrying about
deployment infrastructure.
JavaScript usage and demand is increasing faster than any
other language, in no small part from the growing popularity
of Node.js as well as popular user interface (UI) frameworks
like jQuery. In fact, JavaScript is a ubiquitous language, well
known by millions of developers. Node.js applications are
written in JavaScript, a fully functional programming language,
and can be run within the Node.js runtime on OS X, Microsoft
Windows, and Linux with no changes. Node.js is a server-side
runtime that compiles and executes JavaScript at high speeds
and is well suited for real-time, data-intensive apps and APIs.

The Modulus Node.js and MongoDB cloud platform is

designed to simplify and speed development of the new generation of scalable, always-connected business and consumer
apps that are constantly monitored and optimized for the best
experience. The Modulus platform is ideally suited for realtime mobile, SaaS, social, and big data apps that run across
distributed devices and can seamlessly handle floods of data
requests with built-in performance monitoring and analytics.
Progress Modulus provides hosted or private PaaS options
for developers, enabling them to quickly and easily deploy,
scale, and monitor data-intensive, real-time applications using
powerful, rapidly growing Node.js and MongoDB technologies. MongoDB is the leading NoSQL database system and is
designed for scalability, performance, and high availability.
As a result, Node.js is a natural fit for building custom API serv
ices, integrations, messaging frameworks, and independent
UI backends. Benefits of developing with Node.js include the
following:

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Chapter 2: Simplifying Rapid Application Development

23

It allows you to separate the back-end UI layer from the

back-end business logic, giving front-end developers
maximum control and flexibility to work in the framework of their choice.

It provides a scalable framework for messaging by managing real-time, two-way communication with thousands
of concurrent connections between any types of clients
and services.

It enables developers to build new API services and integrations with other Internet-enabled products and APIs.
The components and add-ons to the Pacific platform support
Node.js development efforts. Rollbase is a natural fit to serve as
a powerful Backend as a Service (BaaS) for Node.js applications.
DataDirect Cloud (using APIs) can be used as a way to integrate
with disparate cloud and on-premise data sources in Node.js
applications. Using its APIs, Progress Corticon business rules
management can be used as a complex decision service engine
from Node.js applications. In effect, Node.js serves as the central
glue for tying technologies and applications together in a highcontrol platform. Figure2-3 shows you how it all works together.

Figure2-3: N
 ode.js ties together underlying technologies and applications
in a high-control platform.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Getting anOverview
ofProgressCorticon
Progress Corticon enables you to automate your business
rules so your organization can make better, faster decisions.
It does so by separating business logic from the application
code, resulting in improved agility and reduced time-to-market
by empowering business users (as well as IT) to directly
implement and modify rules outside the applicationfreeing
your IT resources to focus on innovation rather than custom
coding for rules.
More than 500 customers use Corticons patented no-coding
rules engine to automate their most sophisticated decision
processes, reducing development and change cycles by up to
90 percent.

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Chapter 3

Using Rollbase for

Application Development
In This Chapter
Implementing Rollbase
Creating, editing, and deleting an application
Retrieving and accessing data
Transferring data

ollbase uses a model-driven development approach for

application development. Objects in Rollbase are application building blocks that capture and store data in chunks,
eliminating much of the need for coding. Objects are also
customizable so you can add more fields as needed. And you
can easily define relationships between objects. For example,
a single sales request in a sales support application could
require multiple sales resources, so you can choose a many
to one relationship.
This flexible building-block approach combined with an
easy-to-use interface accessible by a browser simplifies the
application development process.
This chapter explains how you can find your way around
Rollbase, essential information about the Quick Create
Wizard, how to customize your application to meet your
needs, and how to distribute your applications.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Deploying Rollbase: The Basics

The fastest way to get started with Rollbase is to log in
through the console and become familiar with the user
interface. The Quick Create Wizard (the official name for the
Rollbase application creation shortcut) walks you through the
steps to build an application foundation.
After you have explored the interface, I recommend that you
install prebuilt applications from the Application Directory,
take a tour of the apps, see how the user interface (UI) works,
and go from there.

You can get additional information, including videos, at www.

progress.com/rollbase. You can access Rollbase hosted
cloud at www.progress.com/rollbase using a computer
running one of the following operating systems: Windows,
Linux, or MacOS. All you need is an up-to-date web browser
with JavaScript and cookies enabled. Progress recommends
the following browsers:

Internet Explorer 9.0 +

Firefox 21 +

Google Chrome 27.0 +

Safari 6.0 +
Rollbase protects web-browsing sessions with HTTPS and SSL.
With HTTPS, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology protects
your information using both server authentication and data
encryption, ensuring that your data is safe, secure, and available only to registered users of your account. Depending on
the browser, a lock icon displays in the address or the status
bar to verify that youre accessing the Rollbase service via
HTTPS.

Setting upyour account

The first person to sign up for Rollbase from a particular
organization becomes an administrator. During the sign-up
process, this user provides information about your organization that is stored in the account. Administrators can do the
following:

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

Create new users

Install applications from the Application Directory

Customize applications for specific business needs

Create entirely new applications

27

Any Rollbase user with the administrator role has full

access to all of these features, as well as to all data in the
account. Administrative users can also purchase additional
user licenses, upgrade to another Rollbase subscription
plan, add more capacity for records, applications, storage,
and more.

Obtaining your Progress ID

A Progress ID registration is required for the first administrative user and is free. Visit www.progress.com/rollbase,
click Try Now, select either Hosted or Private Cloud, and
follow the steps to create the account.

Logging in
Both administrative and other users receive a confirmation
email with a temporary password and a login URL. Logging in
requires a user ID and password.

Progress recommends that you change your password periodically to protect your account. Administrators can require
that passwords meet certain criteria, such as length and inclusion of numbers.

Using user navigation

Rollbase is the application Platform as a Service (PaaS)
within Pacific that enables the building of web-based applications. When you log in, youll see that its available from the
Applications drop-down menu. Using the Progress Rollbase
web-based user interface, you can develop and distribute
applications and search, navigate, and enter data.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Accessing application settings

You can manage your applications from the Application Setup
area. To access the Applications Setup area, follow these
steps:

1. In the Applications section of the Rollbase Sidebar,

click the down arrow and select Setup from the
drop-down list.

Doing so displays the Setup page.

2. On the Setup page, click Applications Setup.

Doing so displays the Applications Setup page.

3. On the Applications Setup page, click Applications.

This step displays the Application Setup

Applications page.

4. Click the name of an application to display the

details for that application, such as its objects, tabs,
and portals.

Developing anApplication
onRollbase
Rollbase can help you develop your application easier than
you may think. These sections describe the key steps to
create an application in Rollbase.

Creating anapplication
You can create new applications in the following ways:

New Application button

The New Application button below the Applications dropdown list allows you to quickly create applications by a variety of methods:

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

29

Use the Quick Create Wizard, where youre guided

through a step-by-step process of creating objects, fields,
and relationships.

Install an application template from the App library.

Use external data from sources such as spreadsheets,

Force.com, Microsoft Access, or OpenEdge.

Use existing objects (objects are chunks or pre-existing

modules of data).

Setup application
From the Setup application, you can create a new application
that uses existing tabs and objects in it. To create a new application from the Setup application, do the following:

1. From the Applications dropdown list, select Setup.

2. In the Applications Setup area, click Applications.

Doing so displays a list of existing applications.

3. Click New Application.

4. In the Deployment Status section, select or deselect

the appropriate boxes.

You can select or deselect the following boxes depending on your preferences:

This application is deployed: Deployed applications are available to both administrative and
non-administrative users. You may want to leave
an application undeployed until youre ready to
expose it to your end users.

This application doesnt appear in the Sidebar

selector: Specifies whether or not to show this
Application in the Apps sidebar component in
the Deployment Status section.

Enable field-level help for this application:

Whether or not to display field-level help for any
Object Fields in this application that have fieldlevel help defined.

Show first level of menus below tabs: It provides an option to display the first level of menu
items underneath the tabs.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

5. In the Application Details section, fill in the following fields:

Application Name: This name is in the

Applications drop-down (if enabled) and in the
navigation heading.

Description: This optional description is shown

if you publish the application.

Custom Logo: This is a logo in GIF, JPG, or PNG

format to replace the Rollbase logo in the top-left
corner. Use an image that is 212 pixels wide by
53 pixels high.

6. Add any existing components to your new application.

The Tabs, Core Objects, and Dependent Objects sections give you the opportunity to add existing components to this new application. You can specify the
order in which tabs appear.

To add a component, select it from the Available

list and click the right arrow to move it to the
Selected list.

To reorder tabs, click the up or down arrow to

the right of the list.

7. In the User Roles and Individual Users section, specify

the permissions for this application.

8. Click Save.

Editing anapplication
You can modify applications from the Setup application in two
ways:

View all application components and edit them by

category.

Edit the same attributes and properties set when the

application was created.
The following procedures describe both:

1. From the Applications dropdown list, select Setup.

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

31

2. In the Applications Setup area, click Applications.

A list of existing applications displays:

3. Find the application of interest and do one of the

following:

Click the application name to view all application

components.

Click Edit to change attributes or properties set

when you created the application.

Deleting anapplication
Deleting an application has the following consequences:

All objects (and corresponding data records) that are

assigned to the deleted application and arent assigned
to any other application will be permanently deleted.

All menus, portals, and hosted files that are assigned to

this application and arent assigned to any other application will be permanently deleted.

The application record will be permanently deleted.

You cant delete System objects while deleting an application

because doing so will cause an error. To avoid accidental deletion of important information:

Before deleting an application, you must edit it and

deselect the Is Deployed box.

Wait for one hour and then delete your application.

Considering other app options

The More Actions button on the application view page
(Navigate to Setup Applications, and click the Application
Name) offers additional options to manage your application.
The following sections examine these options in greater detail:

View Diagram
The View Diagram option provides a convenient way to visualize your applications objects and the relationships among
them. This option becomes particularly useful when youre

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

designing sophisticated applications involving many objects
and relationships.
This option can also be useful to look at as a reference tool
during the application development process and as a tool to
understand how an installed application was built. Clicking on
this button opens a pop-up window that contains a dynamically generated graphic representing the application.
This graphic is generated by a free service called yuml.me
(www.yuml.me) and may take a few moments to load. For
example, Recruitday Application is available in the Rollbase
Application directory to help get you started.

Application Tree
This option allows you to view all the applications components in UI tree in a pop-up window.

Generate XML
This option allows you to generate and save an XML representation of your entire application. With this XML, you can
install the application into another Rollbase Customer using
the Install from XML option on the Setup Applications
Setup Applications page. It allows you to bypass the shared
Application Directory portal.
To generate the XML for an application, you need to do the
following:

Export the version of application as XML. This value is

auto-incremented each time you generate new XML.

Use the Lock Status radio buttons to choose whether

Users in destination tenants can:

Modify all parts of the installed application

(unlocked)

Modify only unlocked objects, menus, and portals

(partially locked)

Modify nothing; the tenant cant customize the

entire application (locked)

If your application has some inconsistencies or errors, you

wont be able generate its XML.

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

33

The application XML for complex applications can be as large

as much as 5MB or more. To save the application XML as a
local file, choose Save or Save As when youve opened the
XML for viewing.

Update fromXML
Use this option to upload a Rollbase Application XML file and
install updates.

Performance Audit
Use the Performance Audit screen to:

Validate all formulas used by your objects and display

errors (if any).

Check and see if your formulas are using loops (a loop is

a sequence of instructions that is continually repeated
until a certain condition is reached) through related
records. If so, replace them using Query API whenever
possible.

Check whether your Views are using the Template and

Formula fields (which can decrease performance).

Custom Sidebar
You can add a custom sidebar component to your application.
This component will appear under the Application section on
your sidebar. To add the Custom Sidebar component, open
the Application View page and select Custom Sidebar from the
More Options drop-down list. Then specify the components
title and body (HTML or JavaScript).
You can use system-wide settings or other template helpers.
You can also copy the web link to a widget such as Google
Gadget or from other providers, such as Yahoo!.

Associating Custom Sidebar with your application ensures

that this component will be published and installed with your
application.

Custom Header and Footer

You can specify HTML to be added at the beginning and at the
end of each page of the application. You can also include template tokens not related to particular object (often referred to
as helpers).
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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Application Header and Footer offers a convenient way to add
JavaScript to every page. Consider using Hosted Files to simplify this process further.

Mobile-Web Enabled
Use this option to enable a Mobile-Web application for mobile
devices, such as iPhones and Androids. After its enabled,
select all the menus you want to make available on mobile
devices. Progress Rollbase provides two mobile app options:

Mobile Web

Rollbase Mobile

Translation
You can generate Excel spreadsheets and translate your entire
application into a foreign language with this option.

Attach String Tokens

You can attach selected String Tokens. In Java, its common to
have to separate a stringinto separate tokens. These tokens
can be words, numbers, commands, or whatever. Attached
String Tokens will be published and installed as part of
application.

View Installation Log

This option allows you to see the log created when applications are installed.

Installing updates
To update applications you have installed from the
Application directory, as well as any default applications that
came with your Progress Rollbase account, use the Check for
Updates button on the Application Page.
Click this button to check for any updates to the application. When you do, youll be taken to the Rollbase application directory page for that application, where you can see a
button called Install Updates if a newer version is available.

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

35

Below this button you can see a check box called Overwrite
Changes. By default, this check box isnt checked, because
Rollbase assumes that you may have made changes to pages,
views, triggers, and so forth in that application. If so, you
probably dont want to overwrite those changes. If you want
to receive all the changes to pages and other application components, you can select Overwrite Changes.

Select it if you want to overwrite existing application components with the latest updates. If you dont select it, youll only
receive new application components included in this update.
You wont receive any updated components. For example,
leaving this box deselected means you wont receive any
changes the publisher made to existing fields, pages, views,
templates, portals, or portal pages; you only receive new components the publisher created.

If youre an application publisher and Rollbase ISV partner,

you have the capability to push new versions of applications
to all your customers at once from your ISV account.

Managing permissions
You can manage permissions to all aspects of an application by role and by user. User-level application permissions
override role-based permissions, allowing you to provide
additional access control on a user-specific basis. In addition,
Rollbase provides relationship-based permissions as well as
role-based Field-level permissions. For a complete overview of
managing Applications, click Permissions and Access Control.

Accessing Data withRollbase

Data integration is an important part of the management of
information in your environment. Utilizing the accurate, effective tools for this data access is essential for applications
to work correctly and provide accurate information for the
desired result.
The Pacific platform provides integration for multiple data
sources as well as the capability to connect to data via APIs.
These sections highlight the different ways you can use the
Pacific platform to access data.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Integrating withSOAP or REST

When building integrations or external data manipulation
tools that need to communicate with Rollbase, you can use
the Rollbase SOAP or REST APIs.
The SOAP and REST APIs expose the same functionality and
use the same method names. A metadata API for both SOAP
and REST provides methods for creating and manipulating
definitions of applications, objects, fields, and relationships.
The account under which metadata methods are invoked
must have administrative privileges.

Using theSOAP API

Rollbase uses Literal WSDL encoding. If your SOAP infrastructure doesnt support Literal WSDL encoding, consider using
the REST API. To make SOAP calls, you must have a valid
Rollbase user account with login credentials. API users must
have permission to view, create, update, or delete records to
perform these actions via API calls. Permissions cant be set
via the API. Only the administrator can set them using the
Rollbase user interface in the setup area.
The Rollbase SOAP API uses the same workflow mechanism
as the standard Rollbase user interface. For instance, triggers
designed to run on object record creation will run if a record
is created through SOAP API. The Rollbase SOAP API uses the
same permissions mechanism as the standard Rollbase user
interface. Changes in triggers, views, and so forth might not
immediately be updated on the web services server because
of latency due to caching.
To establish a SOAP API session, call the login() method,
which takes username and password credentials. The
login() call returns a session ID that must be used as the
first parameter in all subsequent API calls. To end a SOAP API
session, use the login() method.

To protect Rollbase resources from overuse, the number of

API calls is limited. The number of calls, also referred to as
hits, is posted incrementally over a 24-hour period for each
Rollbase customer and then resets the next day. The type of
your subscription determines the actual number of API hits
allowed. You can find this information in the Subscription

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

37

Details page. You should contact Progress Rollbase Support if

you need to increase this limit for any reason.

Authenticating withREST API

REST calls require authentication and are subject to the
same security procedures as normal user logins, including
IP address whitelists (a list or register of those that are being
provided a particular privilege, service, mobility, access, or
recognition) and external authentication rules. Using this
API requires a valid Rollbase user account with login credentials. The account must have permission to view, create,
update, or delete records to perform these actions using
REST calls.

Permissions cant be set via the API. Only the administrator

logged into a Rollbase account can set them.

Supplying user credentials

You can provide user credentials in one of the following ways:

By using a session ID: Call the login AP with valid credentials to receive a session ID. Supply that session ID
in every REST call as an HTTP header or URL parameter.
At the end of session call, log out to end the REST session. For example, this PHP code sets the HTTP header:
header('sessionId: '.$sessionId); this example
passes the session ID in the URL:&sessionId=1776eb2
d56384f2d9d62f1bf83821b6d@5857.

By providing basic HTTP authentication through the

HTTP header. Append @ and the customer ID to the login
name. A PHP code example: $header = base64_enc
ode($userName.'@'.$custId.':'.$password);
header('Authorization: Basic '.$header);
Private cloud master server users with login permissions
can use their credentials to call the REST API on a specified customer. REST API calls using a session ID or basic
authentication are considered to be made on behalf of
the logged-in user. Permissions of that user are checked
for each subsequent call. For instance, to update a
record logged-in user must have edit permissions on that
record, or the API call will fail. Use of a session ID is preferred in terms of performance and security.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Changes in triggers, views, and the like might not immediately affect the REST server because of latency due to
the caching mechanism.

Migrating Apps toRollbase

Rollbase supports migration of the majority of todays
industry-leading application platforms, including Microsoft
Access, Salesforce.com, Force.com, and more. Many existing
Salesforce and Force.com customers are looking for more
flexible alternatives to the Salesforce.com platform and need
to migrate all or a subset of their existing applications to
Rollbase.

If youre a Salesforce or Force.com customer, youll be pleased

to know that Rollbase is the only cloud platform that allows
you to move your Salesforce.com CRM and other Force.com
applications off the Force.com platform in a just a few clicks.
These sections walk you through the easy migration process
from a Salesforce.com CRM to the Rollbase platform.

The Wizard makes application

migration easy
Importing your Salesforce.com CRM application and all of
your data to your own custom Rollbase CRM application
is easy because its completely wizard driven. In just a few
simple steps, Rollbase creates a CRM application with all your
Salesforce.com objects, including custom fields, relationships,
page layouts, and data.
The process is identical for any Force.com application and
your data. Simply stick to the following steps, and Rollbase
creates a custom application with all your Force.com applications objects, including custom fields, relationships, page
layouts, and data.

Rollbase cant convert APEX and SQL code for you. Some formula fields and components with custom code may not work
in Rollbase without modification.

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

39

Migrating your app toRollbase

infive easy steps
In order to migrate your application to Rollbase, just follow
these helpful steps that walk you through the process:

1. Register a ProgressID in order to be able to access

the Progress Pacific and Rollbase environment.

Simply go to www.rollbase.com and sign up for a

free evaluation by clicking Try Now. Doing so takes
you to a page asking you for basic information, including a username and password. Within a few seconds,
you should receive a welcome email allowing you to
access and log in to the Pacific console and begin
developing applications with Rollbase.

2. Build a new application based on your Force.com

application.

To do so,

Click on the Create Application button, which will

fire up the Create Application Wizard. You want to
import external metadata from an existing application so select this radio button.

Click Create. You want to import from an existing

Force.com application so select this radio button.

3. Import your Force.com application.

Doing so takes three steps:

Log in to your Salesforce account and select the

application that you want to import. For this scenario, select the Sales or CRM application.

During migration, Rollbase preserves relationships

between objects and data. As part of the process,
Rollbase will import not only the objects and their
respective fields that make up the application, but
also the relationships between the objects and the
data itself. For example, if you look at the data available for a contact named Jane Smith, you may see
she is associated with an account named University
of USA. The import process will ensure this relationship is preserved when migrating the metadata into
Rollbase.
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40

Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Retrieve a security token to include with your credentials. You can do so by going to My Settings
Personal Reset My Security Token in Salesforce.
For this step, you need your Salesforce API credentials together with a security token. The token will
subsequently be emailed to you. After you get it,
copy the security token and click Next.

The wizard allows you to import not only standard,

but also any custom objects that have been created
for the application. Select the objects you need and
click Next.

Review the structure of the imported metadata.

If you take a look, you can see that Rollbase will
import and create a new application called Sales.
The Sales application will have a series of tabs that
correspond to the objects that were selected in the
preceding step.

If you expand out the Campaign Object, you can see

the fields associated with the object. You can get
rid of any of these if you dont need them in your
new Rollbase application.

4. When youre satisfied with the structure of the metadata, simply click Create to get Rollbase to build a
brand new sales application.

Within a few seconds, Rollbase will create the new

application. And now it displays on your list. After the
data records have been successfully imported, youll
receive an email confirmation.

5. Review the imported application.

Take a look at the imported application. Here you can

see all the tabs associated with the objects marked for
import. If you click the Contacts tab, you can view the
data. The layout looks exactly like it displayed in the
Salesforce application.
The import process not only retains the page layout,
but also retains the relationships for each record,
which you can see if you click on the account details.
The data and layout look good, and from here you
can also see other relationships that were part of the
original Salesforce application (such as current and
prospective opportunities and so forth).

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Chapter 3: Using Rollbase for Application Development

41

Using the cloud for healthcare

solutions: The HealthStore Foundation
Globally, 21,000 children die each
dayhalf of them in Africaand
two-thirds of them because they lack
access to quality medical care and
essential drugs. Rather than focusing on traditional charitable activities to address this challenge, The
HealthStore Foundation, through
its Child and Family Wellness
(CFW) franchise network in Kenya,
has sought to create a grassroots
infrastructure to improve access to
essential drugs, basic healthcare,
and preventive services using business models that maintain standards, are geometrically scalable,
and achieve economies of scale.
A crucial element to delivering on
this ambitious vision has been CFWs
capability to manage and access crucial information when and where it
needs to about patient history, financial information, inventory data, and
more. Using a mobile touchscreen IT
system based on the Progress Pacific
platform, CFW has replaced manual
processes for collecting, transcribing, and communicating data across
its dozens of clinics, headquarters,
suppliers, and others with an automated cloud-based process. The
results have been life changing.
With Progress Pacific, CFW allows
The HealthStore Foundation to do
the following:

CFW now has fast and reliable

access to data on patient visits,
morbidity statistics, inventory
levels, and financial performance.
The organization can now gather
rich insights on consumers and
on healthcare in opaque, fragmented environments.
The organization can improve
patient care dramatically with
the capability to access and analyze granular transactional data
about individual patient histories
across all of CFWs sites.
The information CFW gathers
helps local Ministry of Health
officials better understand the
health needs of the population
so it can develop strategies
for finding and treating lowestincome patientsthose most
in need of care.
Foundation CEO Greg Starbird
said, Baking this technology
technology made possible by
Progress Pacificinto the operating system of a respected franchise
represents a radical shift for those
at the base of the pyramid who desperately need improved access to
healthcare.

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42

Rapid Application Development For Dummies

In the space of a couple of minutes, you have successfully
migrated an existing Salesforce application together with its
associated data into Rollbase. Now you can begin to leverage
the power of Rollbase to create new records and customize
the interface, including using the page editor to change the
layout of the screen and add new fields if needed.

Try a free trial evaluation. Sign up for a free Rollbase evaluation today at www.progress.com/rollbase and select Try
Now and move your Salesforce applications to the power of
the Rollbase platform. For more information, call 800-477-6473.

These materials are 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 4

Accessing Your Data with

Progress DataDirect Cloud
In This Chapter
Entering the cloud data store
Developing your apps with Rollbase Mobile
Keeping track of data with Easyl
Using Corticon for your business rules

ntegrating your data sources is essential because your data

defines and differentiates your businessand is key to
building data-centric applications. With fast and easy access
to your data, including those housed on the web, social media,
and in your databases (whether on the cloud, on-premise,
or both), you can easily leverage your data, speed the development process, and gain deployment flexibility. Progress
DataDirect Cloud provides a flexible, open platform that delivers unified, quick access to multiple data sources through the
cloud data store, without the need for complex coding.
This chapter walks you through the steps in DataDirect Cloud
to easily and quickly connect to the cloud data store, housing
all your data sources.

Connecting tothe
CloudDataStore
Using DataDirect Cloud requires connectivity to thecloud
data store. To connect to a cloud data store using
DataDirectCloud requires working with the DataDirect Cloud
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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

connectivity service and the cloud drivers. To access the connectivity service and cloud drivers, visit www.progress.
com/datadirect-cloud.

Follow these key steps to connect to the data store:

1. Obtain a DataDirect Cloud account.

Depending on your needs, you can sign up for a corporate or individual account as described in the next
section in this chapter.

2. Create a Data Source that defines how to connect to

your cloud data store.

For details on this step, refer to the later section, Creating a data source definition or watch
a educational video on www.progress.com/
datadirect-cloud.

3. Download and configure DataDirect Cloud JDBC

or ODBC drivers to provide connectivity between
applications that need to access cloud data and the
DataDirect Cloud connectivity service.

Creating a DataDirect Cloud

account and login credentials
DataDirect Cloud gives you two options to manage the login
credentials that your application will need to access the connectivity service.

If the data source definition includes credentials for the

cloud data store, an application must provide the name
of the data source that you created in the preceding
section and the credentials for your DataDirect Cloud
account.

If the data source definition doesnt include credentials

for the data store, an application must pass in the name
of the data source, the credentials for the DataDirect
Cloud account, and the credentials for the cloud data
store.

DataDirect Cloud offers three types of accounts:

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

Corporate user account

Individual user account

DataDirect Cloud account

45

These sections look at the first two. To create a

DataDirect Cloud account, visit www.progress.com/
datadirect-cloud.

Setting upa corporate account

You need a Progress ID to use DataDirect Cloud corporate
account. Stick to the following steps to do so:

1. Click the Contact Us button on the DataDirect Cloud

website, and the inquiry page displays.

2. Fill in the details and click the Submit button.

After your information is reviewed and processed,

Progress Software will create your account and send
a confirmation email, which includes the URL for
registration.

3. Copy and paste the entire URL provided by Progress

software into your browsers address bar and press
Enter.

The Progress ID Registration page displays.

4. Follow the directions to create a Progress ID.

5. Read the Terms of Use, and click I Agree.

The Dashboard view appears.

When your plan is active, go to the Creating a data source
definition section for more information.

Setting upan individual user account

You need a Progress ID to evaluate or purchase DataDirect
Cloud. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click the Try Now button at www.progress.com/

products/datadirect-cloud and the Progress ID
Registration page displays.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

2. Follow the directions to create a Progress ID.

After verifying your information, Progress Software

will create your account and send a confirmation
email, which includes the Progress ID for you to use to
log in.

3. Click the Activate My Account link in the confirmation email, and log in.

4. Read the Terms of Use, and click I Agree.

The Subscription Plans page displays.

5. Select a plan and follow the prompts to complete the

subscription.
When your plan is active, follow the steps described in the
next section.
When youre ready to purchase or upgrade, log in and click
My Plan to display your current plan. Click Upgrade to view
available plans.

Creating a data source definition

You define the information that DataDirect Cloud needs to
connect to the data store in a data source. These default connection values are used each time you or your application
connects to a particular data store. In addition to user credentials, the data store may provide other options you can use to
tune performance.

When youre logged in to your DataDirect Cloud account,

follow these steps to create a Data Source:

1. In the left navigation panel, click Data Sources to

open the Data Sources view.

2. From the list of data stores, click the appropriate logo

for the type of data store you want to connect to.

The Create Data Source dialog opens.

To set up a data source for data stores behind a
firewall, you must first install and configure an onpremise connector. Check out the later section, Using
DataDirect Cloud On-Premise Connector for more
information.
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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

47

3. If applicable, select On-Premise or Cloud, depending

on the type of data store you want to connect.

4. On the General tab, enter the login credentials

required for the data store.

To prevent DataDirect Cloud from insisting login credentials for the data store, you can create and save a
data source definition without entering credentials.
When you test the data source connection, youll be
prompted to specify these details for the current session and applications will need to supply the credentials when connecting to the JDBC or ODBC driver.
5. To configure advanced behavior, click the Advanced
tab.

Table4-1 provides details on the fields specific to each

supported cloud data store.

6. When youre satisfied with the Data Source definition, do the following:

Click Save to create the definition without testing

the connection. You can test later by executing a
query.

Click Save and Test to create the data source and

check whether a connection can be successfully
established with the data store.

The Save and Test option is available only if you

specify the login credentials.
The new data source will display in the My Data
Sources list.

Table4-1

SQL Support for Each Data Store Type

Data Source

Supported SQL

Apache Hadoop Hive

Apache Hive On-Premise Parameters (Beta),

Apache Hive Parameters (Cloud) (Beta)

DB2

DB2 On-Premise Parameters,

DB2 Parameters (Cloud)

Greenplum

Greenplum On-Premise Parameters (Beta),

Greenplum Parameters (Cloud) (Beta)
(continued)

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Table 41 (continued)
Data Source

Supported SQL

HubSpot

HubSpot Parameters

Informix

Informix On-Premise Parameters (Beta)

Marketo

Marketo Parameters

Microsoft Dynamics
CRMOnline

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Parameters

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server On-Premise Parameters,

Microsoft SQL Server Parameters (Cloud)

MySQL

MySQL On-Premise Parameters on,

MySQL Parameters (Cloud) (Beta)

Oracle

Oracle On-Premise Parameters,

Oracle Parameters (Cloud)

Oracle Eloqua

Oracle Eloqua Parameters

Oracle RightNow

Oracle RightNow Parameters (Beta)

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL Parameters

Progress OpenEdge

Progress OpenEdge Parameters Cloud, Progress

OpenEdge On-Premise Parameters

Progress Rollbase

Progress Rollbase On-Premise Parameters,

Progress Rollbase Parameters

Salesforce-based data
sources

FinancialForce Parameters,
Salesforce Parameters,
ServiceMax Parameters,
Veeva CRM Parameters

Sybase ASE

Sybase On-Premise Parameters (Beta),

Sybase Parameters (Cloud) (Beta)

Choosing advanced map options

Data mapping describes how to map elements between two
distinct data models, usually distinguished as the source and
the target. To support SQL access to cloud data stores, the
DataDirect Cloud connectivity service maps tables, columns,

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

49

rows, relationships between tables, and stored procedures.

In a DataDirect Cloud map, the source data model can be
from a relational (which classifies data based on relationships
and structured formats) or a nonrelational data store (which
houses data in an unstructured manner), while the target type
is a relational model.

For some data stores, the DataDirect Cloud connectivity service creates a map when it connects for the first time and
subsequently uses it for queries and updates. The advanced
tab of a data source contains map options that define the way
the map to the data store is created. The options available
in a data source depend on which type of data store you are
connecting to. Map options provide the capability to force the
creation of a new map and to create named maps. For some
data stores, map options also define whether or not to include
extra columns, such as audit and system columns. After a
map is created, the options used in creating that map cant be
changed without creating a new map.

Eyeing the advanced mapping fields

The default values for advance mapping fields are appropriate in many
cases for any data store. However,
if your organization uses custom
objects, wants to access audit columns, or has tables or columns
named with reserved words, you may
want to change map option settings.
Understanding how DataDirect Cloud
creates and uses maps can help you
choose the appropriate values.
Map options are specific to particular data stores. Keep in mind that
map creation is an expensive operation. In most cases, you will only
want to re-create a map if you need
to change mapping options.

Advanced mapping options include

the following:
Create map and map name
Audit columns
Custom suffix
Keyword conflict suffix
Map system column names
NUMBER data type
Strip custom prefix
System columns
Uppercase identifiers

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Testing a data source

The DataDirect Cloud dashboard allows you to test cloud data
store connections by browsing the schema or submitting SQL
queries. To query a data store, do the following:

1. If the dashboard isnt open, click the My Dashboard

link in the navigation bar.

2. Click the SQL Testing button.

The SQL Testing view displays.

3. From the Data Source list box, select a Data Source.

If you didnt save credentials in the Data Source, youll

be prompted to supply them now.

4. From the Schema list box, select a schema.

A type that corresponds to the type of data source

that youre using is selected by default. You can
choose another type from the drop-down list.

5. Enter a SQL statement in the SQL Editor tab or drag

the table name or the column name from the Schema
browser to the SQL Editor tab and add the syntax
required for the desired query.

6. Click Execute Query.

The results and status of the query are displayed in

the Results and Status sections at the bottom. Queries
are logged in the History tab and can be reused at any
time in the current session.

7. To reuse a query, switch to the History tab and

select the query, and click Execute Query.

Editing connection parameters

Editing connection parameters is sometimes required,
depending on your connectivity protocol. To make those
edits, follow these steps. To edit the connection parameters of
a Data Source definition, follow these steps:

1. If its not open in the dashboard, click the Data

Sources button to display the Data Sources view.

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

2. Select the Data Source you want to edit, and then

click the Edit button.

3. Specify the required changes.

51

Do one of the following:

Click Update to apply the new changes without

testing a connection to it. You can always test a
connection later by executing a query.

Click Update and Test to update the data source

definition and check whether a connection can
be successfully established with the data store.

The Update and Test option is available only if you specify the
login credentials. The data source definition is updated with
the specified changes.

Deleting a data source definition

To delete a data source definition, do the following:

1. If it isnt open in the dashboard, click the Data

Sources button to display the Data Sources view.

2. Select the Data Source that you want to delete, and

then click the Delete button.

The selected data source is removed from the My Data

Sources list.
After you delete a data source definition, you cant undo the
delete action.

Using DataDirect Cloud

On-Premise Connector
When you install the DataDirect Cloud On-Premise Connector
on a machine behind your firewall, you can connect to an onpremise data store using DataDirect Cloud without opening
ports or otherwise configuring the firewall. The On-Premise
Connector establishes a secure connection when needed
to provide access to the on-premise data sources through
DataDirect Cloud. You must install the On-Premise Connector

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

on a machine on your network before configuring an on-premise
data source in DataDirect Cloud.

You must install the On-Premise Connector on a machine on

your network before configuring an on-premise data source in
DataDirect Cloud. To download the On-Premise Connector, log
in to DataDirect Cloud and select Downloads. Click the link for
the PDF documentation, or view an educational video on www.
progress.com/datadirect-cloud for more information
about installing the On-Premise Connector.
The On-Premise Connector allows you to access an on-premise
data store just like any cloud data store. The two important
differences are as follows:

DataDirect Cloud On-Premise Connector must be

installed on a machine that has network access to the onpremise data store.

The data source that you configure in DataDirect Cloud

needs both the Connector ID from the On-Premise
Connector and the connection details for the on-premise
data store.

Configuring theOn-Premise
DataSource
After the On-Premise Connector is installed on your network and you use the Configuration Tool to determine the
Connector ID for your connector, youre ready to create an
on-premise data source in DataDirect Cloud. To do so, follow
these steps:

1. Log in to DataDirect Cloud.

2. Go to the Data Sources view and select an on-premise

data store from the list of data stores in the upper
pane.

The On-Premise Data Source dialog box displays.

3. Fill in the fields required for the type of on-premise

data store you want to connect to, such as

Apache Hive On-Premise Parameters (Beta)

IBM DB2 On-Premise Parameters

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

Greenplum On-Premise Parameters (Beta)

Informix On-Premise Parameters (Beta)

Microsoft SQL Server On-Premise Parameters

Oracle On-Premise Parameters

Oracle RightNow Parameters (Beta)

Progress OpenEdge On-Premise Parameters

Progress Rollbase On-Premise Parameters

Sybase On-Premise Parameters (Beta)

53

4. Click Save or Save and Test to create the on-premise

data source.

Choosing a driver and configuring

your application
To access cloud data from applications, such as business
intelligence (BI) and reporting tools, you need to install a local
driver that connects them with the DataDirect Cloud service.
The drivers are small components that install quickly. To
install, stick to these steps:

1. Choose which driver to download.

ODBC: Its the most common for many BI and

reporting tools. For example, use the ODBC
driver if you plan to view your cloud data in
Excel or Qlikview.

JDBC: Its the most common for application

servers and Java-based applications, such as
Yellowfin.

If you dont know which driver to use, ask your IT

department or check your tool documentation.

2. Log in to your DataDirect Cloud account.

To do so, from the Quicklinks list, choose Downloads,

and download the driver for your operating system.

To determine whether a Windows operating

system is 32- or 64-bit, right-click the symbol

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

for your computer on your desktop and select
Properties.

If you cant determine which driver to download

for your operating system, check with your IT
department.
3. After the driver is installed, you need to configure
the local driver to connect to the data source you
defined in DataDirect Cloud and configure your
application to connect using ODBC or JDBC.

The following can help you configure your local driver:

Read how to configure your applications to

use the JDBC driver or watch a video on www.
progress.com.

Read how to configure your applications to

use the ODBC driver or watch a video on www.
progress.com.

See a list of videos on configuring specific BI tools on www.progress.com/

datadirect-cloud.

Navigating theDataDirect
Cloudworkspace
To try the DataDirect Cloud connectivity service, you need an
account. When you log in to your DataDirect Cloud account,
the service starts a session and you can access the dashboard
from the My Dashboard tab. When you log out or are inactive
for a period of time, the service closes the session.

The dashboard contains the following views that allow you to

set up and test connectivity to cloud data stores:

Dashboard view: This view lists your subscription

information, such as the type of plan, plan duration,
subscribed date, subscribed data stores, and allocated
usage. Click Show Current Usage to see the usage
statistics.

Data Sources view: This view lists the data stores supported by DataDirect Cloud and allows you to create
a data source definition. A data source definition configures the connection between DataDirect Cloud and

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

55

your data store. You can create one or more data source
definitions for each data store type. Click the appropriate
logo to create a data source definition for that data store.

SQL Testing view: This view allows you to browse schemas and to query data stores for which you have created
data sources. After a connection to a particular data
store is established, the connection can be used to send
SQL statements. DataDirect Cloud translates the standard SQL statements into the format appropriate for each
data store.

My Plan view: This view lists your subscription information such as the type of plan, plan duration, subscribed
date, subscribed data stores, and allocated usage.

Data source parameters

The data source parameters supported are similar in many
cases for both cloud and on-premise versions of the data
stores. However, for simplicity, because the environments
have different requirements for security and other connection features, you can refer to Table4-1 for the connection
parameters.
The following connection parameters for each supported data store are available at www.progress.com/
datadirect-cloud.

Query data stores

The DataDirect Cloud connectivity service supports a variety
of data types, SQL commands, and extensions. In addition,
the service creates catalog tables to store metadata and the
results of certain functions. Applications can access this information through APIs, and you can use supported functions
in the SQL Editor when logged into your DataDirect Cloud
account.
Visit www.progress.com/datadirect-cloud for additional details about the following:

Supported data types

Supported scalar functions

Reports

Supported SQL and extensions

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Catalog tables

Exposed tables

Error messages

Performance tuning

Supported data types

Applications accessing cloud data should use supported data
types. The types differ depending on the data store youre
accessing and whether your application connects through a
DataDirect Cloud Driver for JDBC or DataDirect Cloud Driver
for ODBC. Salesforce data stores include Salesforce, Veeva
CRM, FinancialForce, and ServiceMax.
DataDirect Cloud supports these data types:

Apache Hive

IBM DB2

Greenplum

Hadoop

HubSpot

Informix

Marketo

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Microsoft SQL Server

MongoDB

MySQL

Oracle

Oracle Eloqua

Oracle RightNow

PostgreSQL

Progress OpenEdge

Progress Rollbase

Salesforce-type

Sybase

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

57

Supported scalar functions

Applications accessing cloud data should use supported
scalar functions, which differ, depending on the data store
that youre accessing. Each scalar function returns a single
value based on the input value. The SQLGetInfo function
returns information about supported functions.
Applications can construct SQL statements using the following syntax, where scalar-function is one of the functions listed
in the topic for your data store.
{fn scalar-function}
For example:
SELECT {fn
UCASE(NAME)} FROM EMP
This list summarizes scalar function support for the available
data stores:

Apache Hive

DB2

Greenplum

Informix

Microsoft SQL Server

MySQL

Oracle

Oracle Eloqua, HubSpot, and Marketo

PostgreSQL

Progress OpenEdge

Salesforce-based, RightNow, Microsoft Dynamics, and

Rollbase

Sybase

Reports
The Salesforce-type data stores provide reporting functionality. DataDirect Cloud exposes reports defined in a data store
as stored procedures. An application can obtain a list of the

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

reports by calling the SQLProcedures catalog function. The
names of the reports that can be invoked through the driver
are listed in the PROCEDURE_NAME name column of the
SQLProcedures results.

Salesforce Data Store reports

Salesforce-based data stores organize reports into folders. The
connectivity service incorporates the folder name and report
name into the procedure name reported by SQLProcedures.
The name is created by prepending the folder name to the
report name using an underscore to join them. Additionally,
any spaces in the report or folder names are replaced with
an underscore character. Like all identifier name metadata
returned by the driver, the procedure name is uppercase.
For example, if a report named Opportunity Pipeline is in the
folder Opportunity Reports, it would be rendered as:
OPPORTUNITY_REPORTS_OPPORTUNITY_PIPELINE
An application invokes a report using the standard Call
escape syntax, {call report name}, and the appropriate mechanisms for handling a resultset.
The following example shows one way to invoke the
Opportunity Pipeline report using the driver for ODBC:
SQLRETURN
retVal;
HSTMT
hStmt = NULL;
SQLWCHAR*
sql;
sql = L"{call OPPORTUNITY_REPORTS_
OPPORTUNITY_PIPELINE}";
retVal = SQLExecDirect(hStmt, sql, SQL_NTS);
if (SQL_SUCCESS == retVal) {
// process results}
The following example shows one way to invoke the
Opportunity Pipeline report using the driver for JDBC:
String sql = "{call OPPORTUNITY_REPORTS_
OPPORTUNITY_PIPELINE()}";
CallableStatement callStmt = con.
prepareCall(sql);
boolean isResultSet = callStmt.execute();
if (isResultSet) {
resultSet = callStmt.getResultSet();
// process the resultset}
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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

59

The API used by the driver to obtain the list of reports and
execute the reports isnt an API that is documented by
Salesforce. This API may change or may not be supported in
the future. When passing parameters to stored procedures,
reports arent supported.

Supported SQL and extensions

DataDirect Cloud supports the SQL statements and extensions
described Table4-2. The SQL statements supported are similar in many cases for any data store. However, in some cases,
the data store has different levels of SQL support.

Table4-2

Supported SQL Data Stores

Data Source

Supported SQL

DB2

DataDirect Cloud supports the SQL supported by DB2.

Refer to your DB2 documentation for details on SQL syntax.

Microsoft
Dynamics CRM
Online

Alter session (EXT)

Delete
Explain plan
Insert
Select
Update

Microsoft SQL
Server

DataDirect Cloud supports the SQL used by Microsoft SQL

Server. Refer to the Microsoft SQL Server documentation
for details on the SQL syntax.

Oracle

DataDirect Cloud supports the SQL supported by Oracle.

Refer to your Oracle documentation for details on SQL syntax.

Oracle Eloqua,
HubSpot, and
Marketo

Select

Oracle RightNow

Alter session (EXT)

Delete
Explain plan
Insert
Select
Update

PostgreSQL

DataDirect Cloud supports the SQL supported by

PostgreSQL. Refer to your PostgreSQL documentation for
details on SQL syntax.
(continued)

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Table 42 (continued)
Data Source

Supported SQL

Progress
OpenEdge

DataDirect Cloud supports the SQL supported by the

Progress OpenEdge Database, with the following exceptions:
Stored procedure output parameters
Multiple results
Commit, Rollback, and Set transaction isolation level 1

Progress Rollbase

Alter session (EXT)

Delete
Explain plan
Insert
Select
Update

Salesforcebased data
sources, including Force.com,
FinancialForce,
ServiceMax, and
Veeva CRM

Alter session (EXT)

Alter table for Salesforce
Create table for Salesforce
Delete
Drop table
Explain plan
Insert
Select
Update

Catalog tables
DataDirect Cloud provides a standard set of catalog tables that
maintain the information returned by various catalog functions, such as SQLTables, SQLColumns, SQLDescribeParam,
and SQLDescribeCol. If possible, use the catalog functions to
obtain this information instead of querying the catalog tables
directly. The INFORMATION_SCHEMA contains additional catalog tables that maintain metadata.
DataDirect Cloud provides catalog tables for the following
data store types:

Salesforce.com

Force.com

FinancialForce

ServiceMax

Veeva CRM

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Oracle RightNow

Progress Rollbase

61

Data stores such as Progress OpenEdge, Oracle, and Microsoft

SQL Server dont use the DataDirect Cloud catalog tables.
The following topics describe the catalog tables provided by
DataDirect Cloud:

SYSTEM_SESSIONS Catalog Table

SYSTEM_REMOTE_SESSIONS Catalog Table

To find out more about Progress DataDirect or to get a trial
download, please visit www.progress.com/datadirectcloud or call 800-477-6473.

Developing Web and Mobile

Apps withRollbase Mobile
Rollbase Mobile is a tool for the development of both webbased and mobile business applications. Using an integrated,
model-driven authoring environment can help your company
deliver exceptional mobile user experiences to your customers. These sections examine the features and benefits to using
Rollbase Mobile.

Eyeing Rollbase Mobile features

This section explores key features of Rollbase Mobile, which
include the following:

Rapid application development: It lets you easily

develop feature-rich mobile and web apps.

Best-in-class development environment: The standardsbased and cloud-based environment lets you efficiently
meet the growing need for business applications.

Single integrated platform through a web browser: It

allows you to build the application model and web user

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

experience easily with a drag-and-drop, point-and-click
development environment.

Automatic back-end services: It automatically generates all

of the back-end services that are needed to support your
mobile app, which means youre able to more easily deliver
a consistent user experience for all your applications.

Noting Rollbase Mobile benefits

This section explores the key benefits of Rollbase Mobile to
enable you to create rich, standards-based and customizable
applications that work seamlessly across your entire application infrastructure. Benefits include the capability to

Easily assemble, deploy, and manage device-independent

mobile applications. Completely integrated in the Rollbase
environment, the Mobile App Builder allows you to
build mobile front-end applications, including the entire
application infrastructure, compatible with iOS, Android,
and other operating systems. Customize your applications to support standard technologies like HTML5 and
JavaScript.

Leverage on-premise and cloud-based data sources as

the foundation for your mobile apps. Rollbase Mobile
automatically generates the application services that
form the foundation for your mobile applications. For
existing assets and applications, you can leverage web
services and JavaScript data objects for easy interaction
from your mobile client.

Build powerful, visually compelling apps using a visual

developer and standard technologies, such as HTML5
and JavaScript. Take advantage of business logic that is
hosted by Rollbase or leverage existing back-end services.
For more complex application logic requirements, use
open standards-based development language (JavaScript).

Support HTML5 applications or native applications

using a hybrid architecture that eliminates costly
device-specific coding. Add simple data integration to
an even wider array of data sources. Now you can push
notifications to your application users and message an
individual or an entire group of users based on business
rules you set. You can also empower users to collaborate
and report on their own data using Easyl.

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

63

Provide an intuitive, native mobile experience using a

hybrid architecture that eliminates costly, device-specific
coding. Support various types of apps without writing
device specific code. You get a rich user experience and
choice of deployment optionsincluding the capability
to post in Apple and Android storeswithout the hassle
of building the same app over and over again.

Managing Your Data

withProgress Easyl
Getting a clear picture of operations is difficult when your data
analysis software has to access data residing in fragmented
silos across your organization. Data, such as contacts and
opportunities in your CRM system, prospects in your marketing automation platform, and purchase history in your data
warehouse, make it difficult to analyze your sales pipeline, get a
single view of your customer, or build your targeted campaigns.
Your marketing analysts, sales operations, customer support
teams, and ISVs all struggle to access, combine, collaborate,
and report on this data, which can consume hours or even
days of manual, error-prone effort spent unifying, filtering,
and cleaning the data in tools such as Microsoft Excel.

Progress Easyl, part of Progress Pacific, is a data management

tool that dramatically simplifies the process of accessing,
blending, and reporting on your organizational data. With
Easyl, the people in your organization become empowered to
self-service their data needs, right when they need it. A 360degree view of your customer, an accurate measurement of
your marketing execution, and the pulse of your sales team
can be the differentiation you need to ignite your business.
Here are a few ways how Easyl can help your people:

Connect: No more manual data exports! Easyl gets it

for you directly from Eloqua, HubSpot, Salesforce and
other Force.com applications, Microsoft Dynamics, and
RightNow as well as Progress OpenEdge and Progress
Rollbase. Easyl also easily connects to your on-premise
data too, from databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, and
others, giving you the options you need to get the most
accurate picture of your business.

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

Combine: No more cutting and pasting. Using readymade templates, Easyl gathers data from your favorite
Software as a Service (SaaS) and on-premise applications
and combines them based on common patterns and
rulesor you can customize your own.

Store: No need to manage infrastructure or technology.

Using the cloud, Easyl can provision private cloud storage for you on-demand. It not only stores the combined
data from your applications, but it also automatically
refreshes it.

Share: No more fragmented email threads or Dropbox

headaches when you share your output. Easyl syncs
reports from the cloud with full corporate oversight of
users for easier collaboration.

Consume: Easyl works with all your favorite business

intelligence (BI) and reporting tools. It produces reports
natively as Microsoft Excel files or connects via ODBC
and JDBC to tools like Tableau, Qlikview, Microstrategy,
SAS, and Cognos or virtually any other self-service BI tool.

Managing Business Rules

withProgress Corticon
Progress Corticon improves decisions and cuts development
costs by managing the business rules that drive business
processes. Corticon is a Business Rules Management System
(BRMS) that delivers high-quality, high-fidelity, and highperformance automated business decisions. It helps increase
agility of decision change processes and enables new insights
into the connections between individual recurring decisions
and business performance.
Corticon separates decisions from processes, helping both
business and IT users quickly create or reuse business rules.
Business analysts can identify, automate, and deploy automated business rules and decision systems in collaboration
with IT, but without the need for expensive custom coding.
More than 500 customers worldwide use Corticon, for
automating and executing business rules. Customers such

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

65

as eBay, AEGON, LexisNexis, US Bank, and the State of Texas

have realized significant bottom- and top-line results using
Corticon to codify, program, and deploy business rules. They
see improvements in decision automation, decision change
processes, and decision-related insights.
Corticon enables you to bring new products to market faster
while efficiently maintaining business rules that make all products and services relevant and responsive to customers and
end users. Systems developed with Corticon stand up to the
most demanding production and customer environments, delivering fast, accurate decision management results.
These sections take a closer look at the features and benefits
of using Corticon.

Looking atthe features

The following takes a quick tour of Corticon business rules
management system (BRMS) key features.

Patented, no coding rules engine: This engine enables

you to identify automatically logical errors in rules and
to ensure safe changes and reduce risks. The Design-time
Inferencing (DeTI) Engine shifts the inferencing workload from runtime to design time, producing more efficient and reliable decisions. Unlike most rules engines,
Corticon processes pre-optimized decision services,
eliminating the need to determine which rules are relevant to the decision and the requirement to know the
order in which to execute those rules. This increases
decision performance.

Automated, model-driven rules creation and maintenance: The creation of automated rules guarantees integrity of rules and enables easy scenario testing. It includes
the capability to create sophisticated groups of tests that
do the following:

Span multiple rule models to test the rule interaction within complex decision logic

Run test cases either one at a time or in batch

through embedded rules engine

Compare expected results to actual results to identify possible errors and to reuse test cases and data

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Out-of-the-box accessibility: Corticons ease of use

enables business and IT users to author, improve, collaborate on, and maintain decision logic easily and efficiently. Corticon Business Rules Modeling Studio is easy
to use and makes modeling decisions and their business
rules accessible to business professionals, business analysts, and software developers across your organization.
Its model-driven approach eliminates the need for programming skills and uses a spreadsheet interface thats
easy to understand yet still supports the most sophisticated decisions and business rules. Even skilled programmers gain from significantly reduced development
cycles when using Corticon Studio to create and maintain
rules-based decision services. The system allows you
to model, analyze, and test rule sets independent of any
IT system, and then save them as executable decision
services.

Business rules collaboration and version control:

Corticon Collaborator is a multi-user solution for managing business rules projects throughout their development and maintenance life cycle. It helps your teams
manage and maintain control over all aspects of the rule
discovery, modeling, and deployment process.

Connect decision services and external data: Corticon

Enterprise Data Connector provides a direct connection
between decision services and external data, and enables
you to enrich decision service vocabularies from your
data sources. It lets you connect business rules to external data sources without expensive middleware or complex SQL coding.

Noting thebenefits
The following list points out some of the unique benefits of
Corticon and how automating your business rules can help
your business.

Faster time to market: New products and services often

require new rules. Or products can require nearly instant
rules enhancements to stay relevant to your customers.
Corticon decision management software enables you to

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Chapter 4: Accessing Your Data with Progress DataDirect Cloud

67

add new and change business rules quickly and easily,

eliminating the need for expensive custom coding and
lengthy development cycles so you can get products
in front of customers fast. At the same time, you still
have the capability to test new rules in a nonproduction
environment before release, maintaining development
control.

Reduced deployment cycles with agile development:

Dynamic organizations require constant adjustment to
business rules. Corticons spreadsheet-like modeling
tools provide unprecedented speed and ease of use, so
your business staff is empowered to manage and maintain rules without requiring development expertise.

High performance and scalability: Today routine, automated decisions must be fast decisions, without system lag,
especially when systems grow to accommodate growth.
Corticon is capable of millisecond response times and can
scale across millions of transactions per day worldwide
if needed. As the number of rules and complexity of data
increases, the system scales linearly with increasing payload, which allows for much higher throughput and minimizes the need for round-trip calls to the server.

Accurate automated decisions: Inaccurate automated

decisions miss the mark and are useless. Corticons
unique rule-integrity features ensure the right decisions
are made at the right time. New rules can be tested to
ensure that they provide accurate results, without conflicts from existing rules.

Improved development times and processes: Decision

rules are often embedded in software code, which makes
them difficult to evaluate and change. Corticon separates
rules from code, eliminating redundant development
tasks and improving rule and information sharing across
programs.

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Driving business and social prosperity:

Good Done Great
Most people have the impulse to reach
for their checkbooks when they see
the consequences of a natural disaster
or some pressing, unmet social need.
But many of those people then hesitate, worried about where their money
will go and how it will be used. Good
Done Great is focused on addressing
both aspects of the problem, simplifying the processes associated with
charitable activities and also enhancing the flows of information needed to
manage and measure results.
Thanks to its vision and Progress
Pacific, Good Done Great helps its
clients create and organize their
giving and corporate social responsibility strategies for maximum impact.
It makes a difference through a combination of consulting services and
applications designed to enhance
the value and effectiveness of philanthropy. Regardless of where an
organization is in its philanthropic
journey, Good Done Greats integrated Progress Pacific-based cloud
solutions enable clients to leverage their giving or corporate social
responsibility efforts, to build highly

effective programs and campaigns,

and to engage their stakeholders,
while driving results that enable both
businesses and society to prosper.
Progress Pacific allows Good Done
Great to do the following:
Provide highly customized experiences for every one of its clients
Address the needs of large,
multinational, and global
organizations
Be flexible to respond quickly
and easily to user requests
Push application enhancements
and updates to their clients on a
regular basis
Expand into new area of philanthropy and integrate with other
providers in the sector
According to David Barach, founder
and CEO of Good Done Great, Prog
ress Pacific has been a game changer
for us in terms of our ability to develop
and improve. Furthermore, those
capabilities have contributed to more
manageable and predictable costs.

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Chapter 5

Top Ten Advantages

to Rapid Application
Development
In This Chapter
Quickly building and efficiently managing rich business applications
Taking advantage of a cloud-based approach for application

development

ere are ten advantages to using Progress Pacific

Platform as a Service (PaaS) to help you meet todays
increasing demand for feature-rich business applications.
When youre ready to move to a modern app development
approach using PaaS, the Progress Pacific team can get you
there, quickly and cost effectively. Find out more at www.
progress.com/pacific.

Accelerate application development. PaaS enables you

to rapidly create, deploy, and host business applications
using a web browser and easy-to-use interface.

Build flexible, data-driven web and mobile applications. It lets you create and deploy business applications
to help meet increasing demand for more applications.

Differentiate with data integration. It frees your IT team

from manual coding, by providing easy-to-use standardsbased and industry-leading data access and connectivity.

Enable a seamless transformation of your business.

You can simplify the development, deployment, and

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Rapid Application Development For Dummies

management of business applications for improved organizational productivity end to end.

Simplify your application development process. You can

build applications free from infrastructure constraints or
traditional development activities (such as build, compile, deploy, and version control).

Unleash the expertise of your workforce. It empowers

your GUI-style developers and technical business users
to co-create applications and proactively solve your most
pressing business challenges with just a browser and an
Internet connection.

Adopt an open architecture that aligns to industry

standards. You can free your organization by using open
standards and enable continuous innovation.

Embrace cloud-native, heterogeneous platform support that can drive significant cost improvements. It
maximizes your investment, utilizing cloud technologies
while allowing users to access applications regardless of
platform (mobile/web).

Drive efficiency by developing applications once. You

can create a single application that works across all your
devices, including support for mobile-specific application
experience without custom code.

Leverage a consistent set of back-end application

services for your cross-channel development. You
can improve user experience and create a consistent
look and feel across your web, mobile, and enterprise
applications.

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These materials are 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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