A programming language or programming environment designed with a specific purpose in mind, such as the development of commercial business software. In short : 4GL. In the history of computer science, the 4GL followed the 3GL in an upward trend toward higher abstraction and statement power.
All 4GLs are designed to reduce programming effort, the time it takes to develop software, and the cost of software development. They are not always successful in this task, sometimes resulting in inelegant and unmaintainable code.
The syntax used in 4GL is very close to human language, an improvement from the pervious generation of languages. 4GL languages are typically used to access databases and include SQL and ColdFusion, among others.
Fourth-generation languages have often been compared to domain-specific programming languages (DSLs). Some researchers state that 4GLs are a subset of DSLs.
