HP SoftBench year-2000 tool eases transition to next millennium.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 1, 1997--Hewlett-Packard Company today announced the availability of a year-2000 tool as an add-on tool for the HP SoftBench installed base. To date, more than 50,000 HP SoftBench licenses have been sold, and many of their owners will need to address year-2000 issues for their existing applications.

The HP SoftBench year-2000 tool is part of HP's Cure2000 program, which helps customers decide whether to replace legacy applications in anticipation of year-2000 problems or to modify those applications. In order to modify legacy applications, customers must first evaluate the potential for date-related problems. The HP SoftBench year-2000 tool, integrated with SoftBench Static Analyzer, is designed to do this.

The HP SoftBench year-2000 tool's pull-down menus make it easy for users to search and analyze C, C++ and COBOL source code for the occurrence of date-related functions. Once these have been located, SoftBench Static Analyzer displays a graphical representation of all affected relationships such as calls-to, calls-from, and variables modified. This picture provides the user with an overall understanding of how the program works, how date-related functions are used and simplifies the "reverse engineering" of the source code. After the programmer decides how to modify the code, HP SoftBench facilitates the re-engineering process by providing an integrated development environment, which makes it easy to cycle through the edit, compile and debug loop. HP SoftBench CM facilitates managing the risk of making year-2000 changes by providing version control and configuration management of source-code files.

Existing HP SoftBench owners can download the HP SoftBench year-2000 free of charge by clicking on the "What's New!" icon at the SoftBench Web site (http://www.hp.com/go/SoftBench). Information about HP Cure2000 may be obtained at the Access HP Web site (http://www.hp.com/gsy/year2000). The SoftBench year-2000 tool is supported on any of the HP SoftBench 5.X versions running on HP-UX(1) 9.X, 10.10 and 10.20.

ABOUT HP SOFTBENCH AND HP SOFTBENCH CM

HP SoftBench is a comprehensive set of integrated, easy-to-use program construction tools for C, C++ and COBOL languages, which accelerates the development of new applications and supports the porting and maintenance of existing applications. C++ SoftBench, which is a superset of C SoftBench, supplies extended functionality for object-oriented programming. HP SoftBench CM is integrated with HP SoftBench and provides configuration management and version control of any software artifacts. HP SoftBench also includes a robust integration framework into which many other ISV tools are integrated.

ABOUT HP

Hewlett-Packard Company is the official information-technology hardware and maintenance supplier to the 1998 World Cup soccer tournament.

HP is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 114,600 employees and had revenue of $38.4 billion in its 1996 fiscal year.

Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com .

(1) HP-UX 9.X and 10.0 for HP 9000 Series 700 and 800 computers are X/Open(R) Company UNIX(R) 93 branded products. HP-UX 10.20 is an X/Open UNIX 95 branded product. -0-

Note to Editors: X/Open is a registered trademark, and the X device is a trademark of X/Open Company Ltd. in the UK and other countries.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.

CONTACT: Hewlett Packard Company

Jerry Boortz, 970/229-6981

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