INFORMIX-OnLine Extended Parallel Server with Industry-Leading Performance Available Worldwide; OnLine Extended Parallel Server 8.1 with New Features To Ship on Leading SMP Cluster and MPP Platforms; Sears, MCI and CMG Cite Breakthrough Decision Support Performance.

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 1996--Informix Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: INFX), the leading provider of innovative database technology, today announced the general availability of INFORMIX-OnLine Extended Parallel Server 8.1 (OnLine XPS) on Hitachi Ltd., IBM Corporation, ICL, Inc. and NCR hardware platforms later this month.

OnLine XPS 8.1, based on Informix's industry-leading Dynamic Scalable Architecture(TM), extends DSA to loosely-coupled or shared-nothing computing architectures, including clusters of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems and massively parallel processing (MPP) systems. OnLine XPS 8.1 includes many new features that provide customers with exceptional performance and scalability for large decision support applications such as multiterabyte data warehousing projects.

Early OnLine XPS customers including Sears, MCI and CMG are leveraging OnLine XPS' leading performance and scalability for their most strategic data warehouse projects. These customers chose Informix because of its strong technology leadership position over other RDBMS vendors due to OnLine XPS' "shared nothing" architecture. This unique architecture offers customers a client/server, high-performance alternative to traditional proprietary systems typically hampered by limited flexibility.

OnLine XPS is also the only portable, parallel database to deliver true "parallel everything" SQL functionality critical for effective database management in the multiterabyte range.

"Never before have organizations been able to access and manage such vast amounts of data in a client/server, open systems environment," said Phil White, CEO and chairman of Informix Software, Inc. "OnLine XPS with its outstanding performance and rich feature set allows companies like MCI, Sears and CMG deploy large-scale applications that are fundamentally changing and improving the way they do business. By the end of the year, Informix will offer OnLine XPS support on nearly all leading hardware platforms so customers may easily complement their existing hardware investments."

"The Sears-Informix partnership is critical to our success in exploiting the value of the extremely large amounts of data we have. Sears' new, strategic data warehouses, based on INFORMIX-OnLine Extended Parallel Server, will provide us with a further competitive advantage in our industry," said Joseph Smialowski, senior vice president and CIO of Sears, Roebuck and Co.

"This process has clearly demonstrated that an open Informix database can perform and scale to meet the needs of a business the size of Sears, giving us flexibility and options that are not available with a proprietary solution."

"We selected OnLine XPS and OnLine Dynamic Server for our `Data Warehouse Manager' because the technology has been proven to handle large volumes of data," said Daniel Jaye, Chief Technology Officer at CMG Direct Interactive, a database and Internet systems company focused on direct marketing solutions.

"We wanted to include Internet-use information into our marketing services, and we needed a database system that would allow us to develop a high quality, reliable data warehouse environment. Informix enables us to reduce costs, manage disparate data sources and deliver better service to our business customers."

OnLine XPS 8.1 Features

OnLine XPS 8.1 includes many new features in the area of transaction and query scalability, decision support (DSS) query processing, very large database (VLDB) manageability, and integration with Netscape's leading Internet servers.

Transaction and Query Scalability

-- Message Facility -- This feature ensures highly scalable performance across all supported platforms. Message Facility avoids using costly protocols, such as TCP/IP, commonly utilized by other parallel DBMSs, which introduce significant performance overhead.

-- Transaction Management Facility -- This feature provides highly scalable transaction coordination across MPP and SMP cluster systems, and avoids the performance overhead associated with two phase commit (2PC) or distributed lock management (DLM) protocols.

-- Application Partitioning -- Application Partitioning allows applications on a specific node to execute local SQL statements, avoiding the need to introduce coordination among nodes in MPP and SMP cluster systems. This feature is particularly important for supporting partitioned applications such as SAP R/3.

DSS Query Processing Improvements

-- Sampled Queries -- This feature allows orders of magnitude speed-up for DSS queries by supporting statistical sampling. Customers can perform trend analysis and data discovery procedures more efficiently by running queries on only a sample of the database.

-- Ranking -- Ranking allows for faster OLAP queries by only delivering the first (or last) N rows requested in a query. Other parallel DBMS vendors would implement this type of processing in a client-based tool and require vast amounts of data to be processed across the network. OnLine XPS can process these type of queries in a fraction of the time.

-- CASE statement -- This feature allows multiple queries to be combined into a single query which dramatically improves performance.

VLDB Manageability

-- OnBAR -- OnBAR is a new utility for on-line backup and restore of very large databases. This tool supports third-party management products such as IBM ADSM, H-P OmniBack and Legato.

-- High Performance Parallel Loader -- This is an upgraded tool for supporting the conversion, load and unload of data between OnLine XPS and other computing systems. The loader supports the parallel conversion of data types including EBCDIC to ASCII, supports a programmatic interface for integration with existing systems and real-time feeds, and includes a highly productive GUI for configuring conversions, loads and unloads.

-- DB Slices -- DB Slices support productive management of partitioned databases by eliminating the tradeoff between administration and performance for VLDBs. Database administrators can logically group together sets of DB Spaces for highly productive management without compromising parallel execution of queries, updates and administration across the underlying partitions.

Web Integration

OnLine XPS 8.1 is bundled with Netscape's Enterprise Server software and Netscape Navigator Gold premium Internet client software -- a Web browser and authoring tool. OnLine XPS' integration with Netscape's market-leading technology will allow users to deliver information from corporate data warehouses over their intranet networks. This significantly reduces the cost of deployment for data warehouse applications by providing universal access from Netscape Navigator Gold browsers.

Pricing and Availability

OnLine XPS 8.1 is scheduled to be generally available on Hitachi Data Systems' SR4300 Scalable RISC Complex; IBM Corporation's RS/6000 SP; ICL Inc.'s Goldrush MegaServer and NCR's WorldMark 5100, starting on July 31, 1996. Pricing starts at $30,000, excluding support and depending on system configuration. Informix plans to announce OnLine XPS support for nine additional hardware platforms by October 31, 1996 and many of these hardware vendors will be demonstrating OnLine XPS at Informix's Worldwide User Conference starting today in Chicago.

About Informix

Informix Software, based in Menlo Park, Calif., provides innovative database technology that enables the world's leading corporations to manage and grow their businesses. Informix is widely recognized as the technology leader for corporate computing environments, ranging from workgroups to very large OLTP and data warehouse applications. Informix's database servers, application development tools, superior customer service, and strong partnerships enable the company to be at the forefront of many leading-edge information technology solution areas.

With the acquisition of Illustra Information Technology's completely extensible database technology, Informix is now positioned as the first information management company capable of meeting the market's exploding need for a sophisticated database engine that combines enterprise scalability, robustness and parallel processing with the ability to store, retrieve, manage and manipulate virtually any kind of rich content data. More information about Informix is available via the World Wide Web at http://www.informix.com and http://www.illustra.com. -0-

Note to Editors: The following are worldwide trademarks of Informix Software, Inc. or its affiliates, registered in the United States of America, as indicated by (R) and numerous other countries worldwide: INFORMIX(R); Dynamic Scalable Architecture(TM); and Dynamic Server(TM). All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Informix news releases are available at no charge through Business Wire's NewsOnDemand fax service. To immediately receive an index of available releases, call 1-800-356-0851.

CONTACT: Informix Software, Inc.

Cecilia Denny, 415/926-6420

[e-mail]

or

Cunningham Communication, Inc.

Holly Hunter, 408/764-0791

[e-mail]