PRESS UNITED AIRLINES CHOOSES INFORMIX DATABASE TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL OF ITS NEXT-GENERATION, MISSION-CRITICAL APPLICATIONS

UNITED AIRLINES CHOOSES INFORMIX DATABASE TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL OF ITS NEXT-GENERATION, MISSION-CRITICAL APPLICATIONS INFORMIX-OnLine Dynamic Server to be RDBMS Platform for United Airlines' Information Technology Reengineering Program MENLO PARK, Calif., (August 8, 1994) -- Informix Software (NASDAQ:IFMX), the leader in parallel processing database technology, today announced that United Airlines (UA) has made Informix the preferred relational database system (RDBMS) vendor for all of UA's next generation mission-critical applications. As part of an overall strategic partnership agreement completed by both companies, INFORMIX(R)-OnLine Dynamic Server(TM) and INFORMIX-SE will serve as UA's database environments to support an enterprisewide, reengineering effort to move its mainframe-based, transaction-intensive applications, such as customer relations, crew and inventory management, flight operations, and gate and facility management, to a client/server, open systems environment. UA selected Informix after an exhaustive analysis of competitive RDBMS offerings' ability to meet UA's information system requirements for scalability, performance and high availability. "Our next generation applications will run in the hundreds of gigabytes and support 10,000 plus users concurrently," said Donna Fridrych, acting vice president, MIS, United Airlines. "Informix provides the high-performance database technology to meet our large application needs; and, just as importantly, knows how to work as a partner to help bring our reengineering efforts to fruition." "UA's information technology needs are critical -- if its IT system goes down, the impact on its operations would be substantial," said Phil White, chairman and CEO of Informix Software. "We understand UA's mission-critical needs and its desire to move off the mainframe to contain IT costs, and our parallel database technology provides the high performance, scalability, functionality and fault tolerance to meet these objectives. We are thrilled at the opportunity to help UA transition to the open systems, client/server world." OnLine Dynamic Server OnLine Dynamic Server is based on its next-generation multithreaded, parallel processing architecture, Dynamic Scalable Architecture(TM) (DSA). DSA incorporates Parallel Data Query (PDQ), a first-of-kind parallel processing technology for open systems that breaks the scalability barriers of previous UNIX' database architectures unable to handle data volume loads of enterprisewide online transaction processing (OLTP), batch and decision support (DSS) applications. PDQ provides tens to hundreds times performance gains over conventional databases because it breaks long-running database processing tasks into subtasks and then processes those tasks in parallel. This approach maximizes the power of each central processing unit (CPU) in a multiprocessor hardware system. OnLine Dynamic Server 7.0 is scheduled to be available by year end on 12 leading symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) hardware platforms including AT&T Global Information Systems (formerly NCR); Data General, Inc.; Digital Equipment Corp.; Hewlett-Packard Co.; ICL; IBM; Motorola, Inc.; Pyramid Technology Corp.; Siemens/Nixdorf Informationsysteme (SNI); Sun Microsystems, Inc.; and Unisys. OnLine Dynamic Server 7.0 has been available on Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.'s SMP platform since February 1994. INFORMIX-SE INFORMIX-SE is a the industry's most successful, easy-to-deploy and administer database server for midrange and smaller systems. INFORMIX-SE is an SQL database engine that requires little database administration and provides reliable performance and sophisticated features that assure data consistency in multiuser configurations. The product takes advantage of client/server features such as stored procedures, triggers, and ANSI SQL-89-compliant declarative integrity constraints. INFORMIX-SE is available in a wide range of UNIX versions as well as in Microsoft DOS and Windows NT implementations. By year end, the product will be available on Windows and OS/2 as well. About United Airlines United Airlines is the largest air carrier in the world operating more than 2,000 daily departures to 156 airports in 33 countries across the globe. Employing more than 75,000 men and women, United is also one of the largest employee-owned companies in the United States, providing world-class service to nearly 70 million travelers in the Friendly Skies. 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. The company's corporate headquarters is in Menlo Park, California. ### -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 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