PRESS:RECORD-BREAKING ONE TERABYTE TPC-D BENCHMARK UNDERSCORES

RECORD-BREAKING ONE TERABYTE TPC-D BENCHMARK UNDERSCORES INFORMIX'S LEADING-EDGE DATA WAREHOUSING SOLUTIONS Informix/Sun Microsystems Demonstrate Ongoing Industry Leadership, Competitive Pricing for Performance-critical Business Solutions MENLO PARK, Calif. (FEBRUARY 25, 1998) - Informix(r) Corporation (NASDAQ: IFMX), the leading provider of innovative database technology, announced today world record one terabyte TPC-D benchmark(TM) results which reinforce the company's leadership position in high-end data warehousing solutions. The benchmark results achieved on Sun's four-node Sun(TM) Enterprise(TM) Cluster solution outperformed, with significantly less hardware, existing performance results set by proprietary solutions from NCR's Teradata and IBM DB2. The combination of Informix Dynamic Server(TM) with the Advanced Decision Support Option(TM) and Extended Parallel Option(TM) and Sun(TM) Enterprise 6000(TM) servers combined with Sun(TM) Cluster(TM) software achieved a TPC-D price/performance of $1,353 ($/QphD@1TB) and TPC-D Power of 12,931.9 (QppD@1TB). This result represents a dramatic cost savings of over 35% compared to NCR/Teradata's $2,103 $/QphD@1TB and IBM/DB2's $2095 $/QphD@1TB. When compared with Informix Dynamic Server on Sun clustered systems, (refer to the table below) both NCR and IBM used more CPUs but achieved a lower TPC-D Power metric (QppD@1TB). "The Informix database, running on the Sun Enterprise Cluster solution, offers customers the most powerful, affordable and scalable data mart and data warehouse solution on the market," said Tony Rodoni, general manager, data warehouse business development unit at Informix. "This latest TPC-D reinforces the performance, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the Informix/Sun solution. With this technology, we have extended the upper limit of data warehouse growth, offering customers unparalleled ability to scale." The Sun/Informix Benchmark The benchmark results on the Informix/Sun solution set new levels in the overall performance and price/performance metrics. The following comparisons are based on the available 1TB TPC-D results as of February 24, 1998. Database/Version: Teradata V2R2.1 DB2 V5.0 Informix 8.21 Hardware vendor: NCR IBM Sun Total System cost: $14,495,886 $13,142,108 11,766,932 TPC-D power: 12,149.2 7633.0 12,931.9 (QppD@1TB) TPC-D throughput: 3912.3 5155.4 5,850.3 (QthD@1TB) Price/Performance: $2,103 $2095 $1353 ($/QphD@1TB) QphD@1TB: 6,894.3 6,273 8,698 Load time: 41:2 13:07 11:55 # of CPUs 128 (32X4) 256 (32x8) 96 Available Date: March 15,1998 March 31,1998 June 15,1998 "Sun's clustered solution is the ideal platform for Informix Dynamic Server, as this combination provides customers with the proven enterprise-class scalability and price/performance necessary to meet and exceed the needs of ever-growing data warehousing and decision support applications," said John Shoemaker, vice president and general manager of Sun's Enterprise Server and Storage Group. "Customers now have tangible proof that the Sun and Informix solution will scale right along with the growth of their business." "In completing a TPC-D benchmark with a terabyte of data Informix has passed a significant milestone in the large scale decision support arena," said Richard Winter, president of Winter Corporation, a Boston consulting firm specializing in very large databases. "Every month, I hear about more users with a hundred gigabytes of data and plans to grow into the terabyte range. They want to see authoritative, objective measures of how a database engine can scale. Only two other companies have a terabyte TPC-D on the board. This is a major step forward, worthy of user attention." About the Benchmark The Transaction Processing Performance Council is an independent organization formed by member companies across the computer industry. The TPC-D benchmark examines system performance in a decision support workload. It differs from OLTP benchmarks in testing system performance in workloads with few transactions involving a large amount of data and more complex query statements. For more information about TPC benchmarks and results, please refer to the Transaction Performance Council Web site at http://www.tpc.org. About Informix Informix Corporation, of Menlo Park, Calif., the world's database technology leader, provides innovative database products that enable the world's major corporations to attain competitive advantage. Informix is widely recognized as the technology leader for corporate computing environments ranging from small workgroups to very large parallel processing applications. Informix's database servers, application development tools, superior customer service and strong partnerships enable the company to be at the forefront of major information technology solution areas including data warehousing, OLTP, and Web/content management. For more information, visit our Web site at http://www.informix.com. ### TPC Benchmark, and TPC-D are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council. (c) 1998 Informix Corporation. Informix(r) is a worldwide trademark of Informix Corporation, or its affiliates, registered in the United States of America, as indicated by (r), and in numerous other countries worldwide. Other trademarks or service marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective holders.