The Common Component Specifications Project

The Progress® OpenEdge® community has many frameworks for modernizing OpenEdge business applications. Some of these frameworks–such as ADM1 and ADM2–were created by Progress. Others were created by the OpenEdge community.

When done right, frameworks help improve productivity by providing common functionality such as security, configuration, session management and more. But many times, our partners and customers feel locked in by a framework—as if it is an all-or-nothing proposition.

There are many communities that have come together as a group to successfully create standard specifications–such as Java or W3C. In such instances, a group of companies create a standard specification, then implement multiple iterations of that specification. For example, JMS specification was created by Java Community and implemented by vendors such as Sonic and ActiveMQ.

Wouldn't it be great to have common business application components that could interoperate because they work on community-driven standards? Standardizing common components of business applications would greatly help the entire OpenEdge community to more quickly, easily and cost-effectively modernize applications, and take advantage of the latest features for those components.

That’s why we launched the CCS Project–to create standard specifications driven by the OpenEdge community, openly and transparently.

A specification with interfaces, dependencies and compliance criteria will help create a structure that enables interoperability. It also enables the creation of tools based on a standard that can be leveraged across different implementations.

You might be thinking, “We don’t use a framework, so none of this applies to me.” Not so. Framework or not, every business application needs common components. If you don’t use a framework, it means you had to write those components yourself.

Here’s what it means for your business: by helping to develop standard specifications, you can influence the direction of those specifications. And, by aligning your implementation with the standard specification, you can take advantage of the standard tools built for those components.

Many of us have been writing business applications for a long time. We have the expertise. Now it’s time for us to come together as an OpenEdge community and build something that defines the future of business applications. That’s powerful!

Let’s get started. Apply to participate in the Common Components Specifications Project!

Happy spec’ing!