Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a leading software provider that enables enterprises to be operationally responsive, made available today its platinum ODBC drivers, Progress^® DataDirect Connect^® for ODBC 7.0. The standards-based, fully interoperable DataDirect Connect for ODBC 7.0 driver allows developers to architect once and deploy anywhere. With the fastest, most secure and reliable database connectivity solution on the market, this driver significantly increases throughput and application efficiency and delivers platinum-level features to developers.

John Goodson, senior vice president of products at Progress Software, and a co-founder of the ODBC standard said: “When our technology collaboration created ODBC in 1992, few of us could have realized how integral the API would be for today’s enterprise. Twenty years later, developers still leverage ODBC’s independent, maximum interoperability to tackle critical business challenges, including big data, cloud computing and mobile computing. As they have for the past two decades, Progress DataDirect Connect for ODBC drivers provide the crucial interface between application and database, giving enterprises secure, reliable business-level visibility and real-time access to information across disparate systems.”

The Progress DataDirect Connect for ODBC 7.0 driver allows application developers to reliably exchange data between Cloud data and disparate data sources. Using ODBC, which is celebrating its 20^th anniversary in the marketplace this year, application developers can develop, compile, and ship applications without targeting specific database management systems or using embedded SQL, thereby eliminating the need to recompile the application for each new environment.

DataDirect Connect for ODBC 7.0 drivers commemorate the 20th anniversary of ODBC with platinum features including:

• Extended Database Support – Full support for Salesforce CRM and Database.com cloud databases, Sybase IQ, and Progress OpenEdge^® application development platform.
• Expanded Bulk Load Support – Increased performance and flexibility of Progress DataDirect Bulk Load, including enhanced streaming in ODBC. Faster bulk operation performance can be applied across an even wider range of scenarios than ever before.
• Enhanced Enterprise-Quality Driver Logging – Complete runtime pictures of driver/database interactions through fully tuneable connection options gives developers the ability to resolve technical issues quickly and minimize production impact of troubleshooting. Memory buffers capture information rather than writing straight to disk, minimizing the impact to the performance of the runtime environment and translating to faster resolution times for technical issues and more uptime in production.
• Increased Breadth of Support – Progress continues to be a leader in both the breadth and depth coverage of databases, database features, and application platforms. DataDirect Connect for ODBC 7.0 drivers expand this coverage even further, delivering enterprise quality ODBC access to even more application configurations than before.
• Outstanding Performance – Progress DataDirect Connect drivers outperform competitive drivers in throughput, CPU efficiency, and memory footprint; resulting in faster response times, more scalable applications and less hardware needed to support application deployment.

The Arkansas Department of Education, recognized for its leadership of educational data and technology, has been using the DataDirect Connect for ODBC drivers for its Statewide Information System reporting application, which maintains educational data for approximately 265 school districts. Cody Decker, director of information systems, commented: “We use DataDirect Connect drivers for critical applications and have moved data from transactional databases to a longitudinal data warehouse. In implementing DataDirect Connect drivers, we have increased the performance of our nightly warehouse loads by approximately 20 percent. The reliability, security and performance DataDirect Connect drivers have provided are integral to our innovation.”

Progress Software is the only comprehensive provider of software for connecting the world’s most critical business applications to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and emerging standards. Developers worldwide depend on DataDirect^® products to connect their applications to an unparalleled range of data sources using standards-based interfaces such as ODBC, JDBC and ADO.NET, XQuery and SOAP. More than 300 leading independent software vendors and thousands of enterprises rely on Progress Software to simplify and streamline data connectivity for distributed systems and to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration.

About Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) is a global enterprise software company that enables businesses to be operationally responsive to changing conditions and customer interactions as they occur – to capitalize on new opportunities, drive greater efficiencies and reduce risk. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class enterprise software spanning event-driven visibility and real-time response, open integration, data access and integration, and application development and deployment – all supporting on-premises and SaaS/Cloud deployments. Progress maximizes the benefits of operational responsiveness while minimizing IT complexity and total cost of ownership. Progress can be reached at www.progress.com or +1-781-280-4000.

Progress, DataDirect and DataDirect Connect are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Any other marks contained herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.