From Data to Decisions: Reporting with OpenEdge
Organizations have more data available than ever, but turning that data into timely, useful business insights can still be challenging. Reporting needs continue to grow, users expect greater flexibility and traditional approaches can place additional pressure on production systems.
That was the focus of our recent webinar, Ask Me Anything: From Data to Decisions, Reporting with OpenEdge, featuring Aaron Burg, Principal Sales Engineer at Progress; Steve Harmelin, who manages the QAD and Pro2 services teams worldwide; and Marv Stone, Principal Sales Engineer at Progress. Together, they explored several ways organizations can get more value from OpenEdge data through modern connectivity, near real-time replication and AI-powered analytics.
The session focused on three key areas:
- Connecting modern BI and analytics tools to OpenEdge with Progress DataDirect
- Using OpenEdge Pro2 to replicate data for reporting and downstream systems
- Expanding reporting possibilities with OpenEdge Replication and AI
Connecting BI Tools to OpenEdge
Aaron began by reviewing three Progress DataDirect approaches for accessing OpenEdge data: ODBCand JDBCdrivers, the Autonomous REST Connectorand Progress Hybrid Data Pipeline.
ODBC and JDBC provide the most direct path by connecting BI and analytics tools to the SQL engine within the OpenEdge database. This can work well for tools such as Power BI, Tableau and other SQL-based applications, but direct connectivity is not always the best fit for every environment.
OpenEdge data structures may not always map cleanly to SQL-based reporting models, and application business logic can be important for interpreting the data correctly. During the Q&A, the presenters also noted that complex BI queries running directly against a production OpenEdge database can add workload and potentially affect application performance.
For organizations already exposing data through PAS for OpenEdge REST APIs, the Progress DataDirect Autonomous REST Connector offers another option. Rather than connecting directly to the database, it consumes REST endpoints and makes them available to reporting tools through familiar ODBC or JDBC connectivity.
This allows organizations to take advantage of existing business logic without requiring analytics teams to build custom integrations for every API. The presenters clarified that organizations can report directly against PAS for OpenEdge APIs, but the Autonomous REST Connector simplifies the process for tools that already work naturally with SQL-based connectivity.
Adding Governance with Hybrid Data Pipeline
Progress Hybrid Data Pipeline (HDP) adds a centralized access and governance layer between reporting tools and data sources. It can connect to OpenEdge through ODBC, JDBC or the Autonomous REST Connector while providing capabilities such as multi-tenancy, authentication, centralized logging, IP allowlisting and throttling.
One benefit is that users do not need direct credentials to the underlying database. This can be especially useful for software vendors and organizations supporting hosted environments with multiple customers.
During the Q&A, Aaron explained that HDP can support a hosted SaaS model in which separate customer environments remain isolated behind their own firewalls. Organizations can create separate tenants for those customers while still providing centralized access through reporting tools.
HDP can also connect to other platforms such as SQL Server, Oracle and PostgreSQL. Data from OpenEdge and systems such as Salesforce or Microsoft 365 remains in separate data sources, but reporting tools can bring those sources together for analysis.
Offloading Reporting with OpenEdge Pro2
For environments with heavier reporting requirements, OpenEdge Pro2 provides a different approach by moving reporting activity away from the production OpenEdge database.
Pro2 provides near real-time replication from OpenEdge into another database, including OpenEdge, SQL, or Oracle, where reporting and analytics workloads can run independently. Some organizations also use the replicated data as a step toward downstream platforms such as Snowflake, Foundry or other enterprise data warehouses.
This approach can improve application performance by reducing the number of reporting queries running against production. It also gives reporting teams greater flexibility to use familiar BI tools and design reporting structures around their specific needs.
Pro2 supports flexible mapping between source and target tables and fields. That means organizations can design the target environment for reporting rather than having to reproduce the OpenEdge structure exactly.
Managing Replication Performance
A key part of Pro2 is its multi-threaded replication architecture. Tables can be distributed across multiple threads based on transaction volume, and heavily used tables can be moved to dedicated threads or split across several threads to improve throughput.
The Q&A expanded on how organizations should approach this balancing process. Steve recommended observing how replication behaves during demanding periods such as month-end or nightly batch processing, then identifying which threads and tables are creating backlogs.
Teams can rebalance tables across existing threads or add capacity where needed. This is also why Pro2 is described as near real-time rather than instantaneous, since periods that generate millions of transactional events can temporarily create a replication backlog.
The webinar also contrasted Pro2 with traditional nightly exports. Batch processes can leave reporting environments dependent on older data, while Pro2 continuously captures transactional activity and resumes replication after interruptions such as temporary network outages.
Organizations can also use OpenEdge Change Data Capture as part of this process. Steve noted that while organizations can build their own CDC-based extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes, they must account for transactional complexities such as rollbacks and other exception scenarios that mature replication tools already address.
Supporting Migrations and Disaster Recovery
Pro2 can also replicate from one OpenEdge database to another through Pro2Pro. This can help organizations migrate large databases between platforms and operating systems while reducing the downtime associated with traditional dump-and-load processes.
By keeping the target synchronized while the source remains active, organizations can prepare the new environment and then perform a shorter final cutover. This can be especially useful for large databases or environments where extended outages are not practical.
The presenters also clarified the difference between Pro2 and OpenEdge Replication. Pro2 is primarily focused on reporting, analytics and downstream data use, while OpenEdge Replication is designed for disaster recovery and high availability. An OpenEdge Replication target can be used in read-only mode for some reporting workloads. However, because the target must mirror the production database, it does not offer the same reporting flexibility as Pro2.
Bringing AI Into OpenEdge Analytics
The final portion of the webinar explored how AI can supplement traditional reporting. Rather than waiting for a new report to be created or modified, users can increasingly ask questions in natural language and retrieve information across multiple enterprise data sources.
Progress Agentic RAG is designed to support this model by retrieving information from structured and unstructured sources, including databases, documents, emails and videos. The solution can provide citations to the source material, helping users verify where answers originated.
For OpenEdge environments, Progress also provides a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server designed to expose OpenEdge data and selected application services to AI tools. The webinar noted that the OpenEdge database must be version 11.7 or later, while the MCP server runs on top of PAS for OpenEdge 12.8 or later.
During the Q&A, Marv described this model as closer to federated agentic analytics than federated reporting. Instead of moving all information into one database, AI can identify where relevant data exists across OpenEdge, other structured systems and unstructured content, then use those sources to answer a question.
The presenters emphasized that this should be viewed as a supplement rather than a replacement for traditional reporting. Structured reports will remain important for many business processes, while AI can provide a more flexible way to explore information across multiple sources.
Organizations interested in evaluating this approach can explore the Progress Agentic RAG trial and other OpenEdge MCP resources. Progress OpenEdge Professional Services can also assist with deploying the MCP server and exposing OpenEdge data or application services.
Additional Q&A Takeaways
The Q&A also covered several practical Pro2 deployment considerations. Pro2 can be deployed in AWS, Microsoft Azure or private cloud environments, and these deployment models are increasingly common.
Pro2 and SQL Server can technically run on the same Windows server, but Steve recommended separating them where possible. Keeping them on separate servers makes resource usage easier to manage and reduces the risk that SQL Server workloads will affect replication performance.
The presenters also discussed Pro2 upgrades. Customers running older Pro2 5.x releases were encouraged to review current Pro2 lifecycle and supported version information, since moving to Pro2 6 involves more than a simple in-place upgrade due to user interface and schema changes.
Final Takeaway
The webinar demonstrated that there are multiple options for reporting architecture. Direct ODBC or JDBC connectivity can provide straightforward access to live data, while the Autonomous REST Connector and Hybrid Data Pipeline add options for using business logic, security and centralized governance. For heavier reporting workloads, Pro2 can move analytics activity away from production while providing near real-time data to reporting databases and downstream platforms. OpenEdge Replication provides a different path when disaster recovery and high availability are the primary objectives. AI introduces another layer of possibility by allowing users to ask natural-language questions across structured and unstructured information. Together, these approaches give organizations several ways to improve how OpenEdge data is accessed, analyzed and turned into business decisions.
Watch the full on-demand webinar to hear the complete discussion and Q&A directly from our OpenEdge experts.
