I was shown some ProvideX code written by a Sage MAS 200 "partner / reseller" for a custom vertical version of MAS 200 to review for a Customer. The code was a horrifying maze of numbered lines, GOTOs, and global variables. It reminded me of the Applesoft BASIC stuff I wrote when I was 8-10 years old... except this code was handling hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. Yikes!
I ended up researching ProvideX pretty heavily as part of that work. The language was evolved from its original roots (much like Microsoft QuickBASIC / PDS evolved out of GWBASIC). Just like QuickBASIC, thought, it could still run the old line-numbered, globally-scoped, nightmare spaghetti code too. There were some neat constructs to deal with ODBC, GUI controls, etc, to be sure, but it seems like it exists now only to serve the old, rickety codebases that are in that "milk the market dry" mode (which pretty much sums up all of Sage's software, too, interestingly enough).
I ended up researching ProvideX pretty heavily as part of that work. The language was evolved from its original roots (much like Microsoft QuickBASIC / PDS evolved out of GWBASIC). Just like QuickBASIC, thought, it could still run the old line-numbered, globally-scoped, nightmare spaghetti code too. There were some neat constructs to deal with ODBC, GUI controls, etc, to be sure, but it seems like it exists now only to serve the old, rickety codebases that are in that "milk the market dry" mode (which pretty much sums up all of Sage's software, too, interestingly enough).