Business Objects Announces BusinessObjects 5.0.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 3, 1998--

Business Objects First Vendor to Provide "Analytical Reporting,"

a New Breed of Decision Support Solution that Integrates Query

and Reporting, OLAP, and Enterprise Reporting

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJY), the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools, today announced BusinessObjects(TM) 5.0, the first decision support system (DSS) to provide analytical reporting by combining scalable enterprise reporting with integrated query, reporting, and online analytical processing (OLAP).

BusinessObjects 5.0 is a major new release of the company's flagship decision support solution that enables non-technical end users to access, analyze, and share information stored in corporate data warehouses, data marts, and packaged business applications.

BusinessObjects 5.0 introduces analytical reporting, which integrates enterprise reporting functions such as robust report distribution and management, with traditional DSS functions such as ad-hoc access to corporate data, report creation, and OLAP functions such as slice and dice and drill, thus providing users with an unprecedented breadth of functionality.

"We are very impressed with Business Objects as our partner for enterer, Allegiance Healthcare. "We have critical repnced financial reporting, and access to a progrmodalities into a single, tightly integrated, and scalable product," said Wayne Eckerson, vice president of ery excited about this new product release."

BusinessObjects 5.0 provides users with the following five key advantages: powerful, interactive, and easy reports; self-service information access; a scalable report and broadcast server; seamless application integration; and minimal total cost of ownership.

Powerful, Interactive, and Easy Reports

BusinessObjects 5.0 was designed for easy report analysis and provides the following features: -0-

--   Improved on-report analysis. With BusinessObjects 5.0, building,
     analyzing, and navigating reports is now easier than ever. With
     significantly enhanced drag and drop capabilities, users have
     easier and more powerful analysis capabilities. For example, with
     a single drag and drop, a user can drill right in a report for
     detailed information or can easily insert on-report calculations.

--   New OLAP dimension bar. New in BusinessObjects 5.0, the dimension
     bar enables users to more easily slice, dice, and drill through
     the information in their reports. When in "drill" mode, a new
     dimension bar appears, providing a graphic representation of how
     the user has drilled down and in what dimension.

--   New conditional formatting. With BusinessObjects 5.0, users can
     provide situation-based formatting on a subset of reports that
     are generated. For example, a customer that is generating invoice
     reports would be able to automatically print "past due" on those
     invoices that are 30 days past the payment date.

--   Improved financial reports. BusinessObjects 5.0 enables users to
     format reports in vertical tables, in addition to regular
     cross-tabular and horizontal tables. This enables users to more
     quickly and easily create certain reports -- in particular those
     for financial departments.

-0-

Self-Service Information Access

BusinessObjects 5.0 features the company's state-of-the-art user interface that is easy for any non-technical business user to learn and use, with minimal interaction with corporate information technology (IT) personnel. -0-

--   Autonomous access to data. Based on the company's existing
     patented "semantic layer" that shields users from the complexity
     of the database, BusinessObjects 5.0 automatically converts
     ordinary business terms such as "product" and "revenue" into a
     database query and converts the result set into a report. This
     provides users self-service access to data and enables users to
     easily build their reports.

--   Autonomous access to reports. With a new personalized report
     catalog, users are able to search reports by category, date, or
     author. Users have access to a personalized business intelligence
     (BI) portal that provides a common report catalog for both
     full-and thin-client reports, and enables easy navigation and
     selection of available reports.

-0-

Scalable Report and Broadcast Server

With BusinessObjects Broadcast Server, an integrated enterprise report and broadcast server, customers are able to quickly and easily publish, push, and broadcast pre-built or ad hoc reports on corporate data. Broadcast Server enables customers to provide personal information broadcasting via e-mail, pager, and fax to their users throughout the enterprise and beyond.

With a sophisticated architecture first developed in WebIntelligence(TM), the thin-client DSS tool from Business Objects, Broadcast Server features an advanced distributed component architecture. This architecture is built on a CORBA-compliant object request broker and provides scalability, load balancing, failover, and self healing.

Seamless Application Integration

BusinessObjects 5.0 makes it easy for customers to customize or extend the core product functionality. New components and an application programming interface (API) enable customers to integrate Business Objects technology with homegrown or packaged applications. -0-

--   Customization. BusinessObjects 5.0 provides a state of the art
     customization environment. Business Objects has licensed
     Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and has integrated
     VBA into BusinessObjects 5.0. This enables customers to customize
     their DSS applications and integrate their DSS applications with
     other Microsoft office applications while leveraging existing
     development skills. For example, a user could incorporate mapping
     technology to allow a user to graphically select dimensions for a
     report. VBA replaces the existing Report Script scripting
     language available in previous version of BusinessObjects.

--   Extendibility. Because BusinessObjects 5.0 embeds VBA, customers
     and partners can extend the core Business Objects functionality
     by providing add-ins to the software. Thus customers will benefit
     not only from features provided directly by Business Objects, but
     also from third-party software that leverages their BI
     infrastructure and investment.

--   New and more granular APIs. BusinessObjects 5.0 offers a more
     granular API on the core BusinessObjects product. In addition, a
     new API is available for BusinessObjects Designer, the software
     used by IT to set up and maintain the interaction with the
     database. This will enable customers and third parties to
     programmatically access the Business Objects semantic layer,
     facilitating integration of metadata with other categories of
     tools used in data warehousing, such as extraction,
     transformation, and loading tools, and helping to reduce the cost
     of ownership of the data warehouse.

--   Report viewer component. In order to facilitate integration of
     BusinessObjects reporting technology into packaged or homegrown
     applications, BusinessObjects 5.0 provides a report viewer
     component. Based on Microsoft component technology, this
     self-contained viewer can easily be embedded into an application
     to provide users with ins users to view reports and refresh
     them wi   by Business Objects, because it interacts with the robust
     CORBA-based Business Objects server infrastise DSS deployments.
BusinessObjects 5.0 providestructure, including the BusinessObjects reposit
managed with a single
     administration toolset for setup, security, and operations. This
     means that.0.

--   New Web-based report viewer. With a new thin-client report
     viewer, users can read, refresh, ically detects the technology on the
     user'bjects 5.0 is expected to enter beta in the fournon-technical
business users with access to information stored in data
warehouses, data marts, and packaged alytical processing, data mining, and DSS
admincts
may be reached by phone at 408/953-6000 or on the World Wide Web at
http://www.businessobjects.com. The
trademarks of Business Objects SA. Other compatrieval line at 800/414-2114 and
selecting option
"two." The announcement may also be downloaded from the Web0/527-0580.