ETI One of the First to Announce Plans for Metadata Standards Compliance.

PHOENIX, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 17, 1996--Evolutionary Technologies International (ETI), a leading provider of enterprise data integration solutions, today became one of the first vendors in the industry to announce plans to bring its products into compliance with the recently released Metadata Interchange Specification (MDIS) Version 1.0.

ETI further announced that it expects to have a compliant version of its ETI- EXTRACT(TM) Tool Suite available within six months. Top executives of ETI have been instrumental in establishing the Metadata Coalition and developing the specification, which was officially ratified by a majority vote of the Coalition membership in July 1996.

"We are taking a very aggressive approach to implementing compliance with the Metadata Coalition's interchange specification because we believe this is a much-needed tactical solution to the problem of open metadata exchange between software tools," asserted Dr. Katherine Hammer, president and CEO of ETI and co-chair of the Metadata Council. "As integrating and managing enterprise data becomes increasingly critical in today's complex heterogeneous computing environments, we want to do whatever we can to ensure that our products support our customers' needs for creating best- of-bred solutions, which almost by definition are going to be multi-tool environments."

With the new release of the ETI-EXTRACT MDIS Data System Library, users will be able to share metadata -- even proprietary metadata -- with all other MDIS compliant products. The MDIS Version 1.0 specification was designed to be an easy-to-implement, tactical solution to the metadata interchange challenge. It provides for a metamodel that addresses the main types of commonly shared metadata objects and a standard import/export mechanism that enables the exchange of these metadata objects between tools. Each object type has a standard naming syntax that creates a unique identifier for each individual metadata object. Any proprietary or tool-specific metadata is treated as an attribute that is carried along with the metadata object to which it belongs.

To comply with the MDIS Version 1.0 specification, ETI-EXTRACT and other tools would have to certify that the tool's metadata import and export mechanisms conform to a standardized read and write procedure that uses this standard naming syntax and carries along the proprietary metadata as required.

The full text of the MDIS Version 1.0 specification and general information about the Metadata Coalition is available through the Coalition home page on the World Wide Web at http://www.metadata.org. Organizations interested in joining the Metadata Coalition may submit their registration directly via the form provided through the Web site or may contact membership coordinator Amy Smith at 512/327-6994 or via e-mail: [e-mail].

The ETI-EXTRACT(TM) Tool Suite

The ETI-EXTRACT Tool Suite is a set of powerful software productivity tools for automating data integration. ETI-EXTRACT offers a simple point- and-click interface that allows users to specify precisely what data to select from legacy and operational system files, what transformations and conversions must be performed on the data, and how to move the converted data to the appropriate target files. Based on the user's specifications, the ETI-EXTRACT tool automatically generates and executes all of the programs needed to collect and migrate existing data into the new applications. The product supports virtually any programming language and can be tailored and extended to fit the needs of most any heterogeneous data environment. ETI-EXTRACT also captures extensive metadata and provides unique, flexible metadata management capabilities, which are critical for effective data warehousing.

Evolutionary Technologies International 

Evolutionary Technologies International is a leading provider of software solutions for moving data between incompatible systems in heterogeneous computing environments. ETI's powerful, comprehensive tools reduce IS costs by automating the process of data collection, transformation, and migration for data warehousing, application implementation, and legacy data migration to new database storage systems or architectures such as distributed client/server. ETI's products are used by leading Fortune 500 companies from major industries worldwide, as well as by public utilities and government agencies. Launched in January 1991, ETI is the first and most successful spin-off to data from the MCC research consortium. ETI, headquartered in Austin, Texas, now has offices in 12 U.S. cities and several wholly owned subsidiaries in Europe and Canada.

ETI, ETI-EXTRACT, and Evolutionary Technologies International are all wholly owned trademarks of Evolutionary Technologies International, Inc. All other product and company names mentioned are included for identification only and may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies or institutions.

CONTACT: Evolutionary Technologies International

Pam O'Neal, 512/327-6994,

[e-mail], http://www.evtech.com.