Synon Ships Synon/2 Release 5.0; Entire Synon/2 Product Family Upgraded; Synon '95, The 1995 International Conference for Synon Users.

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 21, 1995--Synon Inc. has started shipping Release 5.0 of the Synon/2 product family.

In Release 5.0, all six products that comprise the Synon/2 product family have been substantially enhanced, making this the most significant release since the product's introduction in 1986.

Over the past ten years, Synon/2E has dominated the market for AS/400 development tools. Synon/2's popularity among its users keeps increasing and in 1994 Synon won two prestigious awards from key industry publications, the User's Choice Award and the Buyer's Choice Award. According to C. Wesley McPeters, a consultant at Management Systems, Inc., in Memphis, TN, "Synon/2E Release 5.0 is the most extensive and most important release of Synon ever."

Richard Goldberg, Synon's president and CEO, said, "Synon's leadership position in the AS/400 application development tool arena is due to our powerful model-based approach to application development and maintenance and our strong emphasis on customer service. Synon tools give our users the power to not only abstract business rules at a high level and easily make business changes, but also rapidly deliver high performance, robust applications. Release 5.0, with its major functional enhancements, provides our customers with significant new capabilities."

New Enhancements

The most significant enhancements to Synon/2E Release 5.0 are the Change Control features, impact analysis, function versioning, and client/server generation. Synon has also introduced a powerful Change Management tool. In Synon 2/E Release 5.0 the underlying architecture of the Synon design model has been greatly enhanced, enabling the tool interface to be substantially modified with a new look and feel.

Synon/2E Impact Analysis

A new Impact Analysis module provides Synon/2E developers with the ability to determine how changing any object in the Synon design model will affect other objects. The resulting model object list can be saved for subsequent actions, such as edit, generate and compile. With Impact Analysis, developers can build Model Object lists as they go along. This allows check-out of objects to development for change, or simply to regenerate the objects. Ross Jamison, vice president and chief scientist of Transition Systems Inc., Boston, MA, said, "Synon/2E 5.0's impact analysis is probably the most significant feature ever introduced into the product. Our software engineers can perform tasks in minutes that previously took weeks. This has enabled us to improve the productivity of our staff and the integrity of our software."

Synon/2E Change Control Facilities

Change control allows Synon users to manage change by providing two major facilities, multi-level impact analysis and function versioning. The change control facilities provided in Release 5.0 are automatically linked to Synon/CM to provide an integrated, automated change management environment for the Synon/2E user.

Synon/CM

The newest member of the Synon/2 Release 5.0 family is Synon/CM. Change management gives developers the ability to manage and distribute changes to an application at the design model level and maintain integrity with generated source and object code. Rene Valencourt, database administrator at Mennonite Mutual Aid, Goshen, IN, said, "Synon/CM provides many of the features of change management that we have sorely needed, including: the object check out and locking, conflict management, and working with model objects."

Synon/CSG 5.0 - NEW Windows 3.1 Generator

Synon's Client/Server generators (Synon/CSG), for Microsoft Windows and OS/2, working in tandem with Synon/2E, generate distributed function cooperative processing applications. Synon/CSG allows customers to quickly deploy Synon/2E designed applications into a client/server configuration. Jeff Koehler, senior systems engineer for Aetna Life & Casualty, Murray, Utah, said, "With Synon/CSG, moving to client/server was as easy as flipping a switch." Koehler said Synon/CSG also allowed Aetna to reduce their training time for 400 end-users by 50 percent.

Commitment to Two Product Lines

Rick Brown, vice president of worldwide marketing for Synon, said, "The robust functionality of Release 5.0 shows Synon's commitment to the Synon/2 product family and solidifies Synon's strategy of having two distinct product lines." In July, Synon announced Obsydian, a workstation-based development environment which uses innovative software technology called "Object Engineering." Object Engineering combines the data modeling and design abstraction benefits of Information Engineering with the re-use advantages provided by Object Orientation.

Price and Availability

With the release of Synon/2E 5.0, Synon is making available special leasing terms that make Synon/2E, one week of education, an on-site mentor and one year of technical support available for an initial price of $14,000, plus attractive monthly payments.

Synon Corporation

Synon Corporation, a privately held company headquartered in Larkspur, California, is a leading provider of advanced application development tools for building industrial strength commercial applications. The company's two product lines are Obsydian and Synon/2E. The company has over 5,000 customers worldwide, operations in over 40 countries and 70+ installations around the world. For more information, call 415/461-5000 or write to Synon Corporation, 1100 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur, CA 94939.

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Note to Editors: Synon and Obsydian are registered trademarks of Synon Corporation.

CONTACT: Synon Inc., Larkspur

Marty Tacktill, 415/461-5000