Application development is under enormous pressure nowadays. Apart from the increasing number of specialized adaptations, a slew of technical challenges have to be solved such as web enabling, SOA, platform independence and integration, hardly any of which can be resolved with traditional programming means. Application developers are therefore starting to look to Java. But coming from procedural languages like RPG, Cobol, Natural etc., the path to Java is very rocky and full of risks. IBM's Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) offers a sensible compromise.

EGL is both a programming language and a development environment. In a productive manner, it ties in the concepts of traditional programming with productivity improvements from 4GL and new concepts like service orientation and modeling. EGL is easy to learn for traditional application developers.