Informix First DBMS Vendor to Ship Connectivity Product Supporting OSF's DCE Standard; INFORMIX-DCE NET Provide a Standards-based Heterogeneous Connectivity Environment for ODBC-enabled Applications

Business Wire, Jan 24, 1995

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 1995--Informix Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:IFMX), the leader in parallel processing database technology, Tuesday announced the availability of INFORMIX- DCE/NET, a new connectivity product which delivers distributed computing services based on the Open Software Foundation (OSF) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) specification.

INFORMIX-DCE/NET provides a truly open computing environment for any ODBC-enabled tool or application -- providing customers transparent access to Informix and other relational databases, while taking advantage of DCE's services.

DCE is a set of services (including security and database directory capabilities) that help enterprises to create and manage extensively distributed, multivendor collections of hardware platforms, operating systems, networks and applications. For example, a large bank may have a mixture of PCs on the desktop, UNIX servers in the back office, and a number of MVS mainframes distributed around the world. The bank may need to ensure that the desktop users can access data anywhere in the enterprise without needing to know its exact location, while at the same time ensuring that the data is secure. INFORMIX-DCE/NET supports both the DCE Security Service, which authenticates clients and encrypts data to the database, and Global Directory Service, which centrally stores and manages database names and locations.

"DCE has become an important standard as customers implement enterprisewide client/server applications with mainframe-caliber manageability and security" said David Watson, marketing manager, servers and connectivity at Informix. "INFORMIX-DCE/NET ties ODBC-enabled development tools, such as INFORMIX-NewEra, as well as other ODBC applications to Informix databases within a DCE environment."

INFORMIX-DCE/NET Client/Server Benefits

The architecture of INFORMIX-DCE/NET provides added functionality beyond its integration with the OSF DCE standard in order to address the needs of customers who are expanding their client/server applications across the enterprise. This functionality of INFORMIX-DCE/NET includes:

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-- Secure Environment For ODBC Tools -- GUI tools and existing applications already written in INFORMIX-NewEra, INFORMIX-HyperScript Tools, Visual C , Visual Basic, Microsoft Access, and other tools that support the ODBC standard, can transparently connect to the DCE environment and utilize its many secure features such as Kerberos, encryption and authenticated login.

-- Transparent Migration -- Customers can easily migrate to the DCE environment and take full advantage of its services and the Informix database without redevelopment, recompiling or relinking their applications. This saves programmers time and expense by allowing them to centrally manage and administer heterogeneous computing environments.

-- Open Access To Non-Informix Databases -- INFORMIX-DCE/NET not only opens up the enterprise by allowing transparent access to DCE-compliant environments, but, through INFORMIX-Enterprise Gateway, it also allows access to heterogeneous databases, such as Oracle, Sybase and DB2.

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Informix's Connectivity Architecture

"The goals of our Connectivity Architecture are location transparency and data security across the enterprise, and architectural simplicity" said Steve Sommer, vice president of marketing at Informix. "DCE/NET is an important component of our Architecture and supports all three of these goals." Informix has a proven track record of implementing and delivering standards-based database technology that benefits enterprisewide customers. Other standards-based components of the Connectivity Architecture include Informix's early and continued support for DRDA, an IBM standard which specifies read/write capabilities to IBM relational database sources; and the implementation of the X/Open XA standard, for distributed transaction processing with compliant transaction monitors.

Informix is also announcing the shipping of INFORMIX-Enterprise Gateway, which provides a single gateway for SQL and RPC access to relational and legacy systems such as IMS and VSAM.

Other connectivity commitments include the addition of ODBC capability to Informix tools and server products; and the recent broadening of connectivity support to all major client/server platforms including Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows NT, Motif and OS/2.

Pricing

INFORMIX-DCE/NET is priced at $375 per user.

About Informix

Informix Software is the leading supplier of high performance, parallel processing database technology for open systems. The company's database serves are the number one choice of computer hardware manufacturers for publishing Transaction Processing Council (TPC) benchmarks for UNIX-based systems. Informix products also include application development tools for creating client/server production applications, decision support systems and ad-hoc query interfaces, and connectivity software that allows information to be shared transparently from PCs to mainframes within the corporate computing environment. The company's corporate headquarters are in Menlo Park.