Software AG finds 4GL and Eclipse to be a Natural fit

"We have people whose backbone of their business is a 30-year-old application they built in Natural ,but it never goes down," said Beaman.

NaturalOne features the eighth major release of the Natural language, offering such capabilities as an AJAX interface and the ability to build Web services via a point-and-click paradigm.

Natural has a large, legacy user base, although its usage is more common in Europe than the United  States, said analyst Jim Duggan, of Gartner. "Part of [Software AG's] interest with NaturalOne is to get all their products on a common desktop," Duggan said.

"They would like to think this will expand [Natural's] use beyond [the] current audience. I think that's a stretch," said Duggan.

4GLs, he said, work quite well but simply are not in style with developers, he stressed. "They tend to think of them as what their grandfather used," Duggan said.