OpenROAD

OpenROAD stands for "Open Rapid Object Application Development". It is a software product of Actian Corporation.

OpenROAD is a fourth-generation programming language (4GL) which include a suite of development tools, with built-in Integrated development environment (IDE) (Written in OpenROAD), Code Repository, allowing applications to be developed and deployed on Microsoft and UNIX/LINUX platforms.

The history of OpenROAD is closely tied to that of the Ingres relational database.

OpenROAD started in the early 1990s as a product called Windows 4GL. When Ingres was re-badged as OpenIngres, the new name of OpenROAD was born. Since that time it has been through a number of major developments.

The Ingres Product set, (marketed by ASK Corporation, Computer Associates, Ingres Corporation and then Actian) was popular in the governments of North West Europe, and can be found in many government departments. OpenROAD née Windows4GL appeared in beta form on the SUN platform in 1991 as Windows4GL 1.0, and was available to British Universities under a special license agreement. The development environment was known as the Sapphire Editor.

The Sapphire Editor allowed the creation of complex GUI interfaces using an IDE, rather than large volumes of Motif code / resource files. This was one of the first environments to enable rapid prototyping of GUI clients.

Windows4GL 2.0 introduced Microsoft Windows compatibility and the debugger.

OpenROAD 3.0 was when it became stable on MS Windows.

OpenROAD 3.5(1) was when it became stable.

OpenROAD 4.1 introduced an interface to ActiveX controls, providing access to ActiveX control attributes and methods within the language. This mechanism often requires 'Wrapper' DLLs to be written to handle data type issues, one of which being a 2000 character limit on strings of text.

It is an interpreted language that uses a runtime distributable client to process 'image' files, thus no DLL or .NET dependency issues under MS Windows (ActiveX aside).

It was possible to use images in any environment (Unix, VMS or MS Windows up to version 3.51), however portability issues between GUI environments (mostly related to FONT differences) made this difficult.

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