Endianess is a property of processor not the Operating System. For example:
- Intel x86 and x86-64 processors will always use Little Endian encoding irrespective of what Operating System is running on the hardware (Windows, Linux, Solaris).
Endian ordering, is the way the multiple byte integers are stored in memory:
- Either by MSB (most-significant byte) or LSB (least-significant byte).
- Systems storing by MSB are called Big Endian,
- Systems storing by LSB are called Little Endian.
OpenEdge Big Endian Platforms:
- HP-UX (PA-RISC)
- Linux (POWER), AIX (POWER)
- Solaris (SPARC)
OpenEdge Little Endian Platforms:
- HP-UX (ITANIUM)
- Windows (INTEL/AMD)
- Linux (INTEL)
When Progress OpenEdge ports install media, the Chipset and Operating System are important to consider when upgrading hardware that is intended for OpenEdge products to be installed on.
- The certified CPU Architecture for the Operating System is explicitly listed in the Product Availability Guide for this reason.
- When downloading install media from the Progress ESD site, ensure that the Chipset, Operating System and required bit-version of the OpenEdge product are the same as the server that they are intended for.
The term
endianess is most important when describing when binary files are portable between platforms; those platforms with the
same endianess can use binary data transparently. When the endianess is different, it needs to be accounted for.
- Cross-platform database migration is not supported unless the databases is dumped and loaded. Some Cross-platform combinations may work when the endian and bit version are the same, but we don't certify and don't support it. An OpenEdge Binary dump and load across platforms that have different endianess is supported and enhanced specifically for endianess in OpenEdge 11.3.3, 11.4.0. Refer to Article:
- When data are moved between computers where the endian-ness of the CPUs differs, endian aligning values to a specific type needs to be adhered. Refer to Article:
- While a PROREST or an OS copy of the database between different platforms, even if it appears to work, when this baseline is required to use for After-imaging, after-image processing across platforms is not supported by Progress.
