Sterling Software Ships KEY:Workgroup Version 1.5; New Version Provides Seamless Link Between Business Modeling and Systems Analysis Components

Business Wire, March 25, 1996

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 1996--Sterling Software, Inc. (NYSE:SSW) today announced that it is shipping KEY:Workgroup version 1.5.

The advanced architecture of the product suite has made it possible for Sterling to deliver significant enhancements less than six months after the initial offering. New functionality includes increased support for data/process system analysis through inclusion of entity relationship, decomposition and data flow diagramming tools.

These tools augment the integration of the business process reengineering (BPR), application design and visual development facilities available in the first version of the products. The entire suite of products provides an easy to use, powerful, scaleable client/server applications development environment.

"This new release of KEY:Workgroup further illustrates our commitment to leverage our extensive experience in model based development. We continue to deliver leading edge products that meet the evolving needs of the application development marketplace," said Mark Theel, president of Sterling Software's Applications Development Division.

"Furthermore, the KEY: family of products provides an evolutionary approach to adopting new development technologies. The use of a common tools architecture and repository establishes not only strong integration but a common look and feel. It provides the framework to integrate visual development and object oriented techniques with IE (structured analysis/design) tools and techniques, utilizing the best parts of each discipline. This will help users leverage their investment in the models and skills that they have developed with structured techniques."

In addition to the connection of IE and visual development tools, the KEY:Workgroup 1.5 solution provides users with a powerful facility for gaining an understanding of a business. Theel went on to say, "Application development products in the past have failed to provide a language (through models) that the business user could easily understand. This led to continued misunderstandings with developers in regard to exactly what was to be automated in the application design process. The inclusion of Work Flow Analysis and Organization Flow tools provides a basis for dialog between business user and system designer."

"This is the first tool that we have found which truly addresses the communication between application user and application builders," said Paul Ernst of DHS & Associates. "Using KEY:Model helps the user understand their business from a systems perspective and then helps us translate that understanding into an application."

KEY:Workgroup 1.5 brings the addition of Object Manager to the suite. By utilizing a central repository the new Object Manager provides the reuse of visual development tool objects, SQL DDL, project plans, test cases, and other documents.

The ability to drag and drop these objects directly into KEY:Assemble makes this an easy way to manage and reuse objects for faster development. And since these objects are shared, changing the base definition results in updating all instances of that object. Overrides of this inheritance are also provided. Object reuse enables developers to quickly and easily expand applications according to design needs, eliminating the expense and time consuming effort of re-coding.

KEY:Model features added import/export capabilities, including entities, attributes, and subject area hierarchies. This enhances the ability to transfer "BPR" type objects like Processes and Organizations as well as "Analysis" type objects, such as Entities and Data Flows between Sterling Software's KEY:Enterprise and KEY:Workgroup product suites.

Prototyping applications in Microsoft's Visual Basic or Powersoft's PowerBuilder with KEY:Empower helps validate the applications before time is spent building them. KEY:Empower products are designed to leverage the business process reengineering (BPR) and workflow modeling capabilities of KEY:Model in client/server application development. This helps users to thoroughly understand their business processes and data requirements while using a single integrated toolset.

"Increasingly, we are seeing the integration of workflow with modeling tools in this market, to enable organizations to more effectively communicate business information and re-engineer their existing environments," noted Melinda Ballou, senior research analyst at META Group.

KEY:Empower now generates DB2 SQL data definition language (DDL) for MVS, AIX, AS/400, and OS/2 in addition to Sybase, Oracle, Access, Watcom, and Gupta. Other enhancements include relational database design capabilities such as column constraints and error messages as well as triggers and stored procedures.

Available directly from Sterling Software, project team licenses for a suite of products from the KEY:Workgroup family begin at $25,000 (four concurrent users). Each component may also be purchased separately. Component pricing is as follows: $1,799 for KEY:Advise, $5,999 for KEY:Model, $4,199 for KEY:Assemble, $4,199 for KEY:Components, $1,799 for KEY:Empower for Visual Basic or KEY:Empower for PowerBuilder.