Informix Software Sets World Record in the 1000GB TPC-H Benchmark; Establishes Leadership in TPC-H Decision Support Benchmark on XPS.

Business Editors, Technology Writers

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 5, 2001

Informix(R) Software, the database company(TM), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Informix Corporation (Nasdaq:IFMX), today announced that it has established a world record in the 1000GB TPC-H benchmark on a single node system, setting industry-leading marks for speed and accuracy.

The benchmark was run using Informix Extended Parallel Server(TM) (XPS) version 8.31.FD1, the company's high-end data warehouse product, on Hewlett-Packard Company's HP 9000 Superdome Enterprise Server equipped with 64 552MHz PA-RISC 8600 CPUs using the 64-bit HP-UX 11i operating environment and the HP Surestore Disk Array XP512 with its unique crossbar architecture with end-to-end fibre channel infrastructure. This combination delivered a composite query per hour rating of 9754.5 QphH@1000GB at a price/performance mark of $985 QphH@1000GB.

"As TPC-H measures performance in responding to unpredictable and demanding ad hoc queries, it represents one of the most reliable benchmarks in evaluating a database's strengths in meeting the demands of decision support environments," said Richard Wozniak, executive director of product management. "The proven ability of XPS to quickly and accurately handle complex mixed load queries demonstrates its fundamental advantages in delivering customers a robust data warehouse or operational data store solution to best meet their business needs."

XPS is designed to meet the increasingly challenging requirements of business-critical, enterprise-wide data warehousing, as it enables fast data loading and comprehensive data management. Based on "shared nothing architecture," XPS offers near-linear scalability while supporting virtually any query or schema design. In addition, XPS supports large data warehouses on both SMP and parallel architectures, such as clusters, NUMA and MPP.

"This world record TPC-H benchmark result demonstrates the powerful combination of HP's flexible and highly available Superdome server, the HP Surestore Disk Array XP512 and the Informix XPS database server to deliver extraordinary performance in meeting the real world demands of a data warehousing environment," said Mark Hudson, worldwide director of marketing, HP Business Systems and Technology Operation.

"Business analysis of the travel industry requires the manipulation of massive amounts of highly complex data. Informix Software's Extended Parallel Server, when paired with an HP 64-bit system, provides a highly scalable parallel environment, unique in its ability to move custom business intelligence into the database to simplify and manage complex business logic," said Brad Jensen, senior vice president, airline planning systems, Sabre, Inc.

The benchmark configurations used in this TPC-H evaluation include:

         HP 9000 Superdome Enterprise Server
         CPU                                64
         Memory                             96GB
         Disk                               10.182TB
         Number of Nodes                    1
         Operating Environment              HP-UX 11i 64-bit
         Database ServerInformix            XPS 8.31.FD1
         QphH@1000                          9754.5
         $/QphH@1000                        $985

Informix XPS 8.31.FD1 is generally available today, and the hardware and operating system used in the TPC-H benchmark are available now. For more information on the results of the latest XPS single node benchmark, visit http://www.tpc.org/New_Result/TPCH_Results.html. Additional information on the TPC-H benchmark is available at http://www.tpc.org.

About Informix Software

Informix Software, the database company, is a leading provider of database-management systems for data warehousing, transaction processing and e-business applications. With more than 100,000 customers worldwide, Informix Software delivers high-performance database systems in markets including retail, financial services, government, health care, manufacturing, media and publishing, and telecommunications. For more information, visit the Informix Software web site at www.informix.com.

(c) 2001 Informix Corporation. All rights reserved. The following are trademarks of Informix Corporation or its affiliates, one or more of which may be registered in the U.S. or other jurisdictions: Informix(R), the database company(TM)and Extended Parallel Server(TM).

HP-UX Release 10.20 and later and HP-UX Release 11.00 and later (in both 32- and 64-bit configurations) on all HP 9000 computers are Open Group UNIX 95 branded products.