ObjectShare Announces Availability of New Update to Popular Development Software Product.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 19, 1999--

VisualSmalltalk 3.1.3 Includes More Than 140 Program

Enhancements and Additions, is Year 2000 Compliant

ObjectShare(R) Inc. (Nasdaq:OBJS), a leading provider of component solutions, Friday announced the availability of VisualSmalltalk(R) 3.1.3.

This maintenance release will be available to all customers with active support contracts directly from ObjectShare's Web site. An overall reduction of 140 defects have been fixed in this release along with the inclusion of several add-in enhancement "goodies." ObjectShare certifies this release as Year 2000 compliant.

"ObjectShare remains committed to supporting our VisualSmalltalk customer base with products and enhancements that leverage our long-standing history as the leader in Smalltalk development solutions," stated Jim Smith, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. "Since its debut in 1987, VisualSmalltalk has been used to create and deploy many mission critical systems and this release will aid in ensuring that these systems continue to perform well."

"As the leading provider of CAD-based hydrology/hydraulics solutions for civil engineers, we have built an extensive product family using Visual Smalltalk," said Darrow Kirkpatrick, vice president, research and development for Haestad Methods. "Over the last six years we have shipped five products and more than 10 major releases to tens of thousands of civil engineering customers.

"We are excited that ObjectShare has rededicated itself to Visual Smalltalk. The improvements and system class enhancements demonstrated in the 3.1.3 beta will be welcomed by all active Visual Smalltalk developers. We are pleased with ObjectShare's continuing commitment to maintaining and upgrading this powerful and proven Object Oriented development platform."

Among the many program enhancements in this release are:

--  File system enhancements including methods for traversing file
    system entities in class directory, retrieving multiple files
    from FileDialog, and search and matching for long file names.

--  Improved COM/OLE support and enhancements including a
    VirtualMachine with a larger COM callback table (80 entries
    instead of 40).

--  Removal of more than 112 general Smalltalk ARs.

--  New methods in Window: No.getExtendedHostStyle, No.getHostStyle,
    No.makeForegroundWindow, No.redraw.

--  Update to latest PVCS version 6.0 DLLs rated Year 2000 compliant
    by Merant.

--  Date class implements methods to assist users in implementing a
    policy interpreting the century correctly from a two digit year
    string.

The new VisualSmalltalk Goodies package includes:

--  VisualSmalltalk Enterprise Refactoring Browser with lint and code
    rewrite functions.

--  CORBA(R) client that provides connectivity to VisualWorks
    DistributedSmalltalk servers.

--  HTML Support Framework to read and generate HTML files in
    Smalltalk and autocode classes of HTMLObject from an HTML
    language specification file.

--  ActiveX/OCX Wrapper to autogenerate with a single message the
    Smalltalk interface classes for an ActiveX/OCX control, its
    accessor methods, and event classes.

--  OLE/COM Automation Framework, reduces development time of
    OLE/COM automation controllers.

--  Testing framework, makes it easy to build unit tests for all
    Smalltalk code.

Availability

The Windows version of the 3.1.3 update is currently available for free to all VisualSmalltalk customers with active support agreements. An update for OS/2 will enter beta this week and go into production in April. VisualSmalltalk can be purchased direct from ObjectShare sales and will be available for purchase via ObjectShare's Web site soon. An educational version of VisualSmalltalk, SmalltalkExpress, is also available for free from ObjectShare's Web site.

About VisualSmalltalk

VisualSmalltalk is a visual component-based development environment for Windows and OS/2. VisualSmalltalk is available in a base version and in an Enterprise version with integrated version control and configuration management. VisualSmalltalk provides frameworks for application creation, support for ActiveX, collections and many other core facilities. Several extension packages are available including enhanced widgets, business graphics, database connectivity and support for legacy systems.

About ObjectShare

Founded in 1983, ObjectShare is a leading provider of object-oriented software solutions for network computing. With complete support for industry standards using Java or Smalltalk, the company offers its development environments, frameworks, along with consulting, education and support services worldwide. ObjectShare's Smalltalk products originated the first component development tools utilizing just-in-time (JIT) compilers, virtual machine technology and an environment that is 100 percent object-oriented.

With headquarters in Irvine, the company also maintains offices in Santa Clara, Calif., Arlington, Va., Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. For more information about ObjectShare, call 800/973-4777 or 949/833-1122. ObjectShare's World Wide Web address (URL) is http://www.objectshare.com.

Note to Editors: ObjectShare, VisualWorks, Distributed Smalltalk, VisualWave, PARTS and Visual Smalltalk are either registered trademarks or trademarks of ObjectShare Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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