PRESS TOPS APPLIANCE CITY SELECTS INFORMIX DATABASE SERVER AND TOOLS TECHNOLOGY FOR ENTERPRISEWIDE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

TOPS APPLIANCE CITY SELECTS INFORMIX DATABASE SERVER AND TOOLS TECHNOLOGY FOR ENTERPRISEWIDE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS Informix Chosen Over Competitors for its Parallel Database Technology and Leadership in TPC-C Benchmark Results HOUSTON, TX (Feb. 20, 1995) -- Informix Software, Inc., (NASDAQ: IFMX) the leading provider of parallel processing database technology, today announced at the MARKETECHNICS '95 retail conference in Houston, that Tops Appliance City, a large electronics and appliance retailer in metropolitan New York, has selected INFORMIX(R)-OnLine Dynamic Server(TM), INFORMIX-NewEra(TM) and Hewlett Packard hardware in an enterprisewide project to run its $440 million business. After extensive analysis of the three leading RDBMS vendors, Tops Appliance City chose Informix for its leadership in three key areas: parallel database technology, in particular, its Dynamic Scalable Architecture; TPC-C benchmark results; and the number of solutions available for the retail industry. Tops operates eight megastores in the metropolitan New York area with 55,000 square feet per store. In 1993, Tops had the highest volume per sale per square foot in the United States of any publicly-held retailer. To sustain this intensive pace, Tops made the move to open systems to improve accuracy of its inventory management, increase productivity, speed up the sales process for customers, and eliminate paper with Informix-based distributed applications. Tops will use Informix database technology to develop a sales floor automation system that will enable salesmen on the floor to query an item's inventory, price and location and process a customer's order via a pen-based, hand-held unit. A warehouse management system based on Informix will enable salesmen to track products as they move from the warehouse to the store, and to home deliveries through the use of bar codes with RF computers. Tops services over 6,000 home deliveries per week. Tops will also convert its executive information system, financial system, and home delivery information system to Informix. "Informix's Dynamic Scalable Architecture was the most advanced technology available to satisfy our needs, " said George Hodgson, director of systems and programming at Tops Appliance City. "We were also impressed by Informix's leadership in TPC-C benchmark results and its large retail presence." "NewEra will enable us to quickly answer the needs of our users," said Kenneth Guell, project manager of the Stores Systems Group. "Our continued growth as a company will force us to have the right product to meet the needs of our new 'sophisticated' user. We'll be front-ending many of our systems with applications designed with NewEra. Our store, operations and corporate managers will be looking for more and more readily accessible information presented in simple graphical formats." "This contract reinforces our clear lead in the retail market," said Frank Bergandi, vice president, North America at Informix. "Informix's database servers and tools are designed to handle the core business functions necessary for retail organizations to be managed profitably." Informix's leadership in TPC-C benchmarks was a significant part of Tops' decision to choose Informix. Informix leads the industry in TPC-C benchmark results with 21 published to date using INFORMIX-OnLine 5.x, the company's high-performance, OLTP database server. Informix also holds the second- third-, and fourth-place positions in terms of performance on UNIX SMP servers with OnLine 5.x. The company recently announced record-breaking TPC-C results with OnLine Dynamic Server version 7.1. Informix's commitment to and presence in the retail market also convinced Tops to standardize on Informix. More than 200 major retail clients worldwide have selected Informix database products and application development tools to create enterprisewide solutions in merchandising, planning, sales audit, inventory control, logistics and distribution, and in-store processing. About OnLine Dynamic Server OnLine Dynamic Server is based on Informix's next generation, multithreaded parallel processing database architecture, Dynamic Scalable Architecture (DSA). In order to handle larger databases with improved processing performance, DSA was designed to provide parallel processing as a core capability. This core, internal parallelism enables OnLine Dynamic Server to achieve superior performance by processing database tasks in parallel and maximizing the use of multiprocessor hardware. DSA is designed to exploit all the hardware capabilities available on the open systems market including uniprocessor, symmetric multiprocessor (SMP), loosely coupled clusters and massively parallel processors. About Tops Appliance City TOPS APPLIANCE CITY (NASDAQ: TOPS), with sales in excess of $440 million, has been in business since 1970. While appliance and TV chains in the 1980's were busy adding multiple branches, acquiring fierce competitors and moving into foreign cities, TOPS APPLIANCE CITY was quietly becoming the most powerful regional retail company in America. Today, the eight-store chain, headquartered in Edison, NJ, is rewriting the books on retailing in the U.S. by simply always making the customer the number-one priority. Tops was founded in New Brunswick, New Jersey during the 1940's as an appliance store. The company's modern era began on May 1, 1970 when TOPS was purchased by Les Turchin. About Informix Informix Software is the leading supplier of high performance, parallel processing database technology for open systems. The company's database servers 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. Informix's corporate headquarters is based in Menlo Park, California. ### INFORMIX is a registered trademark, and Dynamic Scalable Architecture, OnLine Dynamic Server, and NewEra are trademarks of Informix Software, Inc. All other companies mentioned or other names indicated by (R) or (TM) are registered trademarks of their respective manufacturer. -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% William Daul Advanced Support INFORMIX SOFTWARE INC. 4100 Bohannon Dr. (415) 926-6488 - wk Menlo Park, CA. 94025 uunet!infmx!billd or billd@informix.com