Solutron Releases New Version of Publisher/2000 for Oracle Designer/2000 Users; New Version Adds Project Life Cycle Documentation to Intranet Publishing Capability in Solutron's Automated Documentation Tool.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 1997--Solutron Inc. released version 1.1 of Publisher/2000, an automatic document publishing tool for Oracle Designer/2000, the company announced today.

The new version enables the automatic generation of comprehensive life cycle document deliverables for software engineers and adds the ability to publish these and other project documentation and diagrams over an intranet at the touch of a button.

An automatic document publisher, Publisher/2000 extracts, manipulates and formats data and diagrams from the Designer/2000 repository using a document "ruleset." This ruleset is a set of instructions used for developing documents by extracting and formatting information from the Designer/2000 repository.

This ability to automatically structure and publish "print-ready" system specifications is new to Designer/2000 users. Prior to Publisher/2000, project managers manually searched repositories and then cut and pasted the information they needed into a usable document. Publisher/2000 automates this process and makes design documentation available at the touch of a button. In addition, documentation produced by Publisher/2000 can be customized to comply with a company's internal development methodology or a customer's mandated documentation standard.

"Publisher/2000 makes real-time documentation accessible and easy to produce throughout the project's life cycle," said Ian Fisher, vice president, Designer/2000 marketing and product management, Oracle Corp. "It makes the documentation process so simple that it becomes a component of the process instead of an after-thought."

Solutron introduced Publisher/2000 at the Oracle Development Tool Users Group spring conference earlier this year. The tool was developed to help organizations produce project document deliverables that meet specific requirements for content and layout at each project milestone.

For example, Publisher/2000 ships with task-end deliverable documents such as the Physical Database Design Document and phase-end deliverable documents such as the Initial Design Document. The automatic and real-time generation of documents such as these assist project managers in ensuring that all required business functions are satisfied by the system in progress.

"Standard ways of documenting the analysis and design of systems is essential to understanding project status, progress, and quality," said Ulka Rodgers, president of Group R, and the author of Oracle: A Database Developer's Guide (Prentice-Hall) and UNIX DBMS (Prentice-Hall). "Otherwise, the software development process can turn into a black hole," she continued. "And yet, very few companies are doing this -- simply because manually creating good, standards-compliant documentation is so labor intensive. Publisher/2000 makes documentation easy and provides a consistent means of evaluating the status and progress of every project within a company."

How Publisher/2000 Works

Publisher/2000 browses the repository of the Designer/2000 environment according to a set of pre-determined rulesets. Users have the option of using rulesets that come bundled with Publisher/2000 or creating their own in compliance with internal or third- party standards requirements.

The tool then produces "print-quality" documents that support documentation requirements for the life cycle of the project. Providing detail beyond the tabular inventory reports that are available within Designer/2000, Publisher/2000 uses powerful cross-referencing capabilities to show how model entities evolve through the life cycle of the project. The resulting documents and diagrams can be viewed on the intranet or published in hard copy form. For instance, the Physical Database Design Document, one of the standard document rulesets that ships with the product, incorporates and cross references all aspects of the physical design of a database. The Initial Design Document generates phase-end deliverable documentation, providing a cross-reference between the physical and logical views of the system.

Publisher/2000 version 1.1 is available immediately and costs $4,995.

Designer/2000, a repository-based modeling tool, provides full systems lifecycle support through business process re-engineering, systems analysis and design, and the automatic generation of complete client/server and Web applications. Designer/2000 swept all seven CASE categories in Computerworld's I/S User Brand Preference survey for application development tools conducted in May 1996.

Solutron Inc. is a leading provider of dynamic publishing solutions for complex software engineering environments. Founded in 1985, the company's products are based on powerful rules technology that enables repeatable, reusable and automatic documentation generation. The company offers a suite of publishing products for use with the Oracle Designer/2000 and the Intersolv Excelerator environments.

For more information, please call 650/327-4615 or visit Solutron's web site: www.solutron.com -0-

Note to Editors: Publisher/2000 is a trademark of Solutron, Inc. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks of registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Designer/2000 is a trademark of Oracle Corporation.

CONTACT: Solutron Inc.

Marie McGarry, 415/327-4615

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Crowley Communications

Pamela Crowley, 408/377-8384

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