Database Innovator Releases New Version

FrontBase 3.3 Delivers Phenomenal 2X Speed Boost, Full Text Search, Much More

Los Angeles, October 23, 2001: FrontBase, Inc. today announced that it will immediately begin shipping a new enhanced version of their best-in-class database software, FrontBase 3.3. The release of the 3.3 Version marks another milestone in their path of innovation in database software. While many new features have been added to this release, the most impressive is clearly the increased performance. The new release boasts a 100% improvement in overall performance, and that is no mean feat given FrontBase’s strict adherence to data integrity and disk synchronization rules. FrontBase 3.3 is currently available on the following platforms: Windows (NT), Unix (Solaris, FreeBSD), Linux (RedHat, YellowDog, Debian, Mandrake Linux) and on Mac OS X.

"Many other database products have claimed increased performance in data handling and overall throughput, but we have found that this extra speed is usually at the cost of proper data handling. FrontBase prides itself on its absolute commitment to data integrity. FrontBase was created from the ground up to be the ultimate in fault tolerant transaction processing. We don’t carry the burden of legacy code that is ten or more years old, written before e-commerce was even a concept." Says Geert Clemmensen, CEO and Founder of FrontBase.

A number of other enhancements are included in this release, not the least of which is LookSee™, an unprecedented full text search feature that works with blinding speed to search ASCII, HTML and XML documents. Other advances include improvements to their robust Replication and Clustering capabilities, as well as a new transaction logging mechanism. Enhanced tuning capabilities include a powerful set of statistical and performance indicators. Another innovation is a true first on the Mac OS X platform; a genuinely multi-threaded Aqua application for database administration.

A FrontBase client, Marketocracy (www.marketocracy.com) uses the Internet to identify and recruit the world's best investors to build the world's best family of mutual funds. Blake Ward, Vice President of Engineering of Marketocracy has been using FrontBase 3.3 in actual use for over a month now, but has been part of the beta process since March. "We have been using FrontBase in production since May of last year and the improvements with version 3.3 are phenomenal. During extensive testing, our database running in FrontBase actually outperformed the same database running in Oracle by a significant margin. Database integrity has been unquestionable; we have never lost any data in the entire time we've used FrontBase, development through production. I just can't say enough for the support team, both in quality of knowledge and response time. Our decision to go with FrontBase over Oracle was a brave one, to be sure. The market leader has lots of safe, business-based reasons to use their product. What Oracle does not have, however, is FrontBase's incredible ease-of-use in installation and maintenance. Not to mention the lower overall cost of ownership of FrontBase vs. Oracle, which is a major benefit for our operations going forward."

"On the subject of cost savings, the binary compatibility of the FrontBase database backups between platforms is a big plus. It's a big win (time, complexity, hardware, etc.) to have developers working against their own copy of the database running on a high performance but relatively cheap Mac OS X box, while the live site is running on the expensive Solaris system and still be able to just move databases back and forth. That is a huge advantage to our engineering and development efforts."

FrontBase Database Server was conceived in Denmark in early 1996 using design criteria borne of existing databases' limitations, and the possibilities that could only be achieved with today's technology, to answer the needs of the internet age. The requirements of today are very different technically from the client server architecture of years past. The designers decided on ANSI C for cross platform purposes, using true Unicode in the core architecture for international character sets ensuring easy localization in the global marketplace, and the latest standard of SQL, SQL 92 on the 3rd level. The resulting product is technically incomparable with anything that was designed before the internet age.

There is no finer example of innovation and technical superiority than FrontBase’s "Instant Versioning" technology. Instant Versioning was conceived to meet the real world requirement of virtually zero downtime in a system serving e-commerce transactions. Existing database systems suffer a common problem when a database crash occurs. The system has to be rebuilt and re-indexed at the cost of many hours or typically days of very expensive downtime during which no e-commerce can occur. FrontBase’s "Instant Versioning" software simply does not require any rebuilding after a crash, so the system is back up and available in seconds. Instant Versioning is such a unique concept it has been patented.

FrontBase, Inc. is a privately held, multinational company with facilities in Copenhagen, London, Boston, Austin, Seattle and Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles. FrontBase is fast becoming known as a technological leader in the database industry by providing unique and demonstrable innovations, and through a commitment to exceptional service.

For more information contact:

Kevin Doyle
FrontBase, Inc.
Phone (978) 475-9428
Cell (949) 376-6272