Business Objects Joins Ardent Software Program for Enterprise Metadata Integration.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 1998--Business Objects (NASDAQ: BOBJY), the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools, today announced that it has joined Ardent Software's MetaConnect Cooperative for enterprise metadata integration.

Ardent's new program is designed to help users of BUSINESSOBJECTS(TM) and other data management tools to directly share metadata throughout the data management environment.

Business Objects is the industry's leading provider of tools for accessing, analyzing, and sharing data throughout the enterprise. Through this program, Business Objects will enable its customers to streamline the transformation, integration, and maintenance of their BUSINESSOBJECTS metadata.

Using Ardent's MetaBroker technology, customers can transform their metadata as it is exchanged between BUSINESSOBJECTS and other tools, giving end users the ability to see and understand metadata lineage as well as the business rules that apply to the warehoused data.

"Decision support tools are often the only view with which end users see data from their corporate data warehouses and data marts," said Pete Fiore, vice president and general manager of Ardent Software's data warehouse business unit.

"So we think it is important that companies are able to seamlessly integrate these business intelligence applications with their other data management tools to increase the effectiveness of their data warehouses. We're pleased to work with Business Objects and its leading tools for query, reporting, and analysis as part of the MetaConnect program."

"Ardent is a leading player in the data extraction, transformation, and loading market, and we are pleased to work with it as part of its MetaConnect program," said Dave Kellogg, vice president of corporate marketing.

"Metadata management can play an important role in integrating decision support applications across the enterprise, and this partnership with Ardent should offer our common customers a new, innovative means of simplifying and automating the sharing of their BUSINESSOBJECTS metadata."

About Ardent Software

Ardent Software is a data management company with a range of software products, including database systems and data warehouse development tools.

Its products include the O2 System(R), a high-performance object database management system; DataStage(R), a data warehouse development tool; and UniVerse(R) and UniData(R), extended relational database management systems for packaged business applications.

With worldwide sales and service operations, as well as 1,000 resellers in more than 50 countries, Ardent is one of the top software companies in the world. More than 50,000 customers and over 2,000,000 users in virtually every aspect of business and government use Ardent's products to overcome their most complex data management problems.

Additional information is available on Ardent's web site at www.ardentsoftware.com.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools. Business Objects products provide non-technical business users with access to information stored in data warehouses, data marts, and packaged business applications.

Business Objects provides a complete suite of decision support tools including query, reporting, online analytical processing, data mining, and DSS administration for both client/server and internet environments. Business Objects has sold more than 870,000 licenses to over 6,700 organizations in more than 60 countries worldwide.

Business Objects may be reached by phone at 408-953-6000 or on the world wide web at http://www.businessobjects.com. The Company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbol BOBJY.

Note to Editors: COBOL Direct Connect, DataStage, O2 System, RedBack, System Builder, UniData UniVerse and wIntegrate are registered trademarks of Ardent Software, Inc. BUSINESSOBJECTS and WEBINTELLIGENCE are trademarks of Business Objects SA. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

A full-text copy of this announcement may be obtained by calling the Company's fax retrieval line at 800-414-2114 and selecting option "two." The announcement may also be downloaded from the web; access "http://www.businesswire.com/cnn" and search on "Business Objects." Business Objects product inquiries should contact 800-527-0580.