If it is a business logic intensive application, progress will let you to focus more on the programming for business logic. It is a natural business logic language. If you are using C++ or C#, a lot of SQL sentence are to blended with method calls to execute the SQL sentence, difficult to program, maintain and understand. It is also harder to programmer to learn as well. E.g. you can try to write a simple BOM explosion function in C++ / C# without using stored procedure. If there is no complex business logic or just simple data storing, sort, display. C# or C++ or Java is much better in most circumstances. It is developed using ABAP, a 4GL development language + database management tools.