NSA - Strategic Exchange

Strategic Exchange®

Enterprise Solutions™

Project Highlander

The lifeblood of enterprise applications is their business logic. Organizations involved in writing these applications have an enormous investment in this code. The investment is made in the form of lines of code, testing, raw dollars, and the skill sets of those who create it. Over the years, PROGRESS® has proven itself to be an extremely cost-effective choice for business logic production.

The advent of technologies like Web services and enterprise application integration has served to create both a problem and an opportunity. In today's computing world, there is increasing pressure to provide the services available in existing business logic to new audiences in new ways. While PROGRESS gives us a wonderful platform to create a business-logic layer, integrating those services with technologies like .Net, Java, Web Services and COM can be a significant challenge. However, for those organizations that solve this conundrum, the rewards are quicker, easier, and more reliable integration withother applications and the ability to quickly develop a whole new class of applications using tried and true business logic.

Infor Global Solutions Highlander API (application-programming interface) generator provides a quick and easy method to open up existing business logic to .Net, Java, Web Services, and COM environments.

Once installed, Highlander simply connects to your PROGRESS Application Server and examines the available business logic. The procedures and their parameters are displayed in the Highlander interface where they can be easily edited in a more recognizable format for .Net and Java programmers. After all edits have been made, the desired API can be quickly generated with the click of a button. The generation process provides the following:

.Net dll
Java Jar File
COM dll
Functioning Web Services complete with WSDL
Documentation of all procedures available in the API
Sample programs

From a programmer's perspective, whether you are experienced using PROGRESS business logic or not, Highlander is exceptionally simple to use.

Programmers producing PROGRESS business logic effectively continue to do what they have always done. The only requirement of Highlander is that the business logic runs as a stateless session on an application server. Knowledge of external programming environments is not required to create an API.

Using Highlander, .Net and Java developers interact with only one simple object. Knowledge of PROGRESS is not required because Highlander manages all the details of connecting to the application server and running the PROGRESS code. Programmers simply create an instance of the object, set the required parameters, tell Highlander to execute the business logic, and then retrieve the results.

Envision what your development organization can achieve when the problems of integrating with external technologies are eliminated. Highlander can deliver a single API to all your business logic, creating a single point of contact for all your integration needs.

Imagine the applications you could develop utilizing Java and .Net interfaces with your tried and true business logic. Highlander can expose all your existing business logic to .Net, Java, Web Service and COM environments. Highlander creates a great opportunity to leverage your existing investment in PROGRESS business logic.

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