SLOUGH, UK: Ingres Corp., a leading provider of open source database management software and support services, has announced an open source version of Ingres OpenROAD, the company's platform for rapid application development. The open source version of Ingres OpenROAD is now available as a free download via the Ingres community Website.

By open-sourcing Ingres OpenROAD, more users will be able to try the product and build rapid application prototypes.

Ingres OpenROAD is a rapid application development and flexible deployment solution, known for its exceptionally low maintenance cost. With Ingres OpenROAD, developers have the tools to quickly build and deploy sophisticated high performance and high availability business applications on a variety of platforms, accessing a broad range of data sources.

Typically, organisations that have decades worth of data and database applications on a legacy system struggle to unlock the information so it can be leveraged in new applications on more modern platforms –- such as a handheld device or mobile phone. Ingres OpenROAD addresses this problem. Once written, an Ingres OpenROAD application can be deployed on a variety of platforms without a single change.

Specifically, Ingres has open sourced the 4GL source for the OpenROAD Integrated Development Environment (IDE) component of the Ingres OpenROAD product. Ingres utilises the GPL open source license for the project, which is live on the Ingres community Website.

With this offering, Ingres OpenROAD takes advantage of the open source development model which is designed to deliver innovation to users at a more rapid pace. Users have more influence on product direction, and contributions from users can be integrated into the base product with enterprise support offered from Ingres.

To foster a successful community around Ingres OpenROAD, Ingres has created a number of community tools to aid in the support of the open sourcing initiative, including LXR for source code viewing, bug tool for tracking and entering bugs, a community wiki for sharing information and to gather ideas on new projects.