Ask Reuben – January 8, 2026
Front End Delivery (2026)
Why is there no more 4.01 or 5.01 versions of Front-End products in the Download Products area?
Why am I being told to use 6.00 front-end with a 4.01 back-end or 5.01 back-end?
This article is an update on this article on Front-End Delivery from April 2024. I decided to update the article because I found I was pointing people at the 2024 article and asking them to mentally bring forward two years the version numbers in that article. I also did a presentation at WWDC24 five months after that article was written and I could include some material from that presentation. The concept of Front End Delivery was introduced with the version 5 release with this paragraph in the 5.00 release announcement … All the v5.00 front-end clients will support both Genero v4.01 and Genero v5.00. No new v4.01 front-end packages will be released; anyone needing a maintenance release for their v4.01 front-end installations will need to use the v5.00 front-end packages. In my presentation at WWDC24, I explained this graphically in two slides …
The concept is instead of making sure that the front-end and back-end have the same X.Y number, now you should be using the latest front-end, no matter what the supported back-end you are using. So today if you are using a 4.01 or a 5.01 back-end, the version of the front-end you should be using is the latest 6.00 version.
If I was to draw the Now slide today, it would have the following amendments that show …
- 6.00 as the only supported front-end
- that this is intended to be used with the three supported back-ends; 6.00, 5.01, and 4.01.
The concept of Front End Delivery is also evident in the Compatibility documentation. For GBC Compatibility, note how …
- GBC 4 and GBC 5 are no longer supported.
- that GBC 6 is intended to be used with FGLGWS 4.01, FGLGWS 5.01, FGLGWS 6.00.
Similarly the GDC compatibility documentation has GDC 6 being used with FGLGWS 6.00, FGLGWS, 5.01, FGLGWS 4.01.
The downloads area always has the latest supported version. Hence as evidenced by these two screenshots from the products download area, you should observe that when downloading Genero Enterprise 4.01 or Genero Enterprise 5.01, the version of the front-end that is available for download is 6.00. This is consistent with the download area having the latest supported version.
There is not expected to be any more 4.01 or 5.01 front-end maintenance releases. Any bug fix or new functionality will only be added to the 6.00 front-ends. The danger in staying on the old versions is that if you do need to take a maintenance release, you may find yourself doing a big jump in the version of the front-end at short notice. Even if you are using an older front-end version in production, your users are happy, that version is stable etc, please still make sure you keep testing each new front-end version that comes along. This is so that if you do need to upgrade to the latest you are not surprised by any changes good or bad between the older version and the latest release.
What you should also realise is that if you compare 6.00 front-end with 4.01 and 5.01 front-end, that is a difference of 4 and 2 years respectively of development. With this development …
- any potential security issue in 4.01/5.01 has been resolved in 6.00 version
- any potential bugs in 4.01/5.01 have been fixed in 6.00 version
- if something is a little slow in 4.01/5.01, chances are by 6.00 that has been speed up.
… like with most software companies, sometimes it might be a case of two steps forward, one step backwards, but that is still one step forward.
By not using the latest version, you are not using what you have paid your maintenance or subscription for.
As our front-end team only have to maintain one front-end, they are better placed to add new User Interface features. Universal Rendering and Front End Delivery mean that we have gone from having to maintain 12 front-ends down to 1 universal user interface (the GBC) plus the small host applications (GDC, GMI, GMA).
So back to the original questions, it is correct that 6.00 front-end is what is supported with 4.01 and 5.01 back-end, it is correct that you can only download 6.00 front-end to use with 4.01 and 5.01 back-end.