ALPHASERVER 8400 SYSTEM AMONG FIRST TO EARN ORACLE WAREHOUSE TERABYTE
TEST-TO-SCALE CERTIFICATION

Two-terabyte data warehouse combines Alpha servers, StorageWorks, 64-bit
Oracle7 ...

TOKYO, Japan -- January 18, 1996 -- Building on its strategic relationship
with Oracle Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation today announced
that the AlphaServer 8400 5/300 64-bit RISC system is one of the
industry's first platforms to earn Oracle Warehouse Test-to-Scale
certification. Digital and Oracle demonstrated a multi-terabyte data
warehouse solution to thousands attending the Oracle Open World '96 here.

Digital and Oracle tuned and optimized the AlphaServer 8400 5/300 system
and the Oracle7 database server with Oracle 64-bit Option, together with
Digital UNIX 64-bit operating system and Digital's StorageWorks storage
subsystems using RAID-5. The result was a two-terabyte commercially
configured data warehouse using standard, shipping products from Digital
and Oracle.

"Once again, Oracle and Digital have teamed to demonstrate the superior
power, scalability, and reliability of our high-end solutions in
very-large database environments," said Robert Pariseau, Oracle vice
president of the Digital Products Division. "This test strengthens the
confidence of our customers that moving to 64-bit computing today is a
wise business decision."

Paul Feresten, Digital Storage Business Unit vice president of sales and
marketing, said, "This test demonstrates that StorageWorks delivers the
performance, availability, and capacity needed by Oracle users, from the
multi-gigabyte workgroup environment to the most demanding multi-terabyte
data warehouse."

Data Warehouse Configuration

A terabyte (TB) is equal to one trillion characters -- about the size of
500 million pages of text or 40,000 four-drawer filing cabinets of
information. The 1TB data warehouse was created and stress-tested by a
team of technicians from Digital and Oracle.

Oracle created the terabyte database and managed the database load
operation. The database and pointers were loaded into seven StorageWorks
subsystem cabinets each supporting 300 gigabytes (GB) of data. The storage
subsystem was configured using RAID-5 with additional predefined spares to
ensure the high performance and data availability required in commercial
applications, bringing the total size of the data warehouse to 2TB.

Digital's StorageWorks subsystem is the first storage solution to
demonstrate a RAID-5 multi-terabyte configuration that meets data
warehousing performance requirements while offering higher availability
and substantially lower cost per megabyte compared with RAID 0+1
solutions.

The database was stress-tested on an eight-CPU AlphaServer 8400 system with
8GB of memory, running Digital UNIX V3.2 operating system. The test
involved load and query exercises as well as data placement on the
StorageWorks subsystems.

The exercise was run using the Oracle7 Release 7.3 database with Oracle
64-bit Option, a leading platform for exceptionally high performance,
scalability and functionality in data warehousing applications.

The Alpha Warehouse

"This stress test validates our claims and earlier benchmark results of the
unique 64-bit very-large memory (VLM64) capabilities available today only
from Digital and our database partners such as Oracle," said Pauline Nist,
Digital vice president of the AlphaServer Business Segment. "By
demonstrating the technical feasibility of creating and exercising a huge
data warehouse with off-the-shelf components, we are making it easy and
affordable for customers to gain the competitive benefits of data
warehouse applications," she said.

In industries such as telecommunications, financial services,
manufacturing, transportation, insurance, retail and government, customers
are benefiting from Digital's Alpha Warehouse solutions.

Data warehousing applications provide executives a better picture of
bottom-line performance with detail-level data presented in summary form,
sourced from a wide variety of databases throughout the enterprise.
Mission-critical operations such as customer order fulfillment, financial
management, and inventory control can proceed without IS resources being
siphoned off to support reporting requirements. Knowledge workers can
easily and flexibly develop and execute their own analyses.

For example, market activity, product lifecycles, and customer buying
patterns can be tracked and presented in a variety of viewing formats for
real-time decision making. Time-to-market can be reduced and customer
intelligence can be parlayed into more profitable customer relationships.

AlphaServer Systems -- The World's Most Powerful Servers

Power-hungry applications such as data warehousing, OLTP, visualization,
simulation, and modeling are driving demand for the performance and
fully-available VLM64 computing environment offered only by Alpha. In
fact, only Alpha, of all RISC technologies, delivers and is on a trend
line to continue to deliver performance that clearly differentiates it
from Intel.

In December, Oracle announced record-setting single-system database
benchmark results -- TPC-C results of 11,456 transactions per minute
(tpmC) at $286 per tpmC using an AlphaServer 8400 5/350 system,
StorageWorks subsystems, and Oracle7 with the Oracle 64-bit Option.

Digital pioneered and leads the industry in delivering 64-bit computing.
Only Digital is shipping the high-performance 64-bit servers, AlphaServer
systems, and a 64-bit operating system, Digital UNIX, which together make
VLM possible. Digital's VLM64 technology dramatically improves database
and application performance by raising the amount of information that can
be stored in memory. All 32-bit systems are limited to 2GB of memory.
Today AlphaServer 8400 systems can store up to 14GB of data in memory,
with more in the future.

The AlphaServer 8400 delivers the power, throughput, and balanced processor
and I/O performance to handle the most demanding large commercial,
technical and multi-user applications. It offers more than twice the
performance of the HP 9000-800 T500, and in just seven months, Digital has
shipped more AlphaServer 8000s than the total number of IBM SP2s shipped
in the first two years of that product's life. Major customers have
replaced other vendors' products with AlphaServer 8000 systems, such as
Baxter Healthcare, Best Western Hotels, and American Society of Civil
Engineers.

StorageWorks Subsystems -- Flexible, Platform-Neutral Storage Solutions

Digital's StorageWorks multi-platform solutions meet the capacity,
performance, and availability requirements of any Oracle database, from
the smallest application to the most demanding and complex multi-terabyte
data warehouse.

StorageWorks offers the high performance and availability required for
quick, reliable access to Oracle databases from tens of gigabytes to
multiple terabytes. Since it is a multivendor product family, StorageWorks
reduces the cost of implementing and maintaining Oracle-based applications
across multiple platforms.

The scalability and flexibility of StorageWorks ensures investment
protection as capacity requirements, systems platforms, and business needs
change. Its modular cabinetry and enclosures support customers' storage
growth needs and ensure ease of migration across system platforms.

64-bit Digital UNIX Operating System

Digital's 64-bit UNIX operating system, now in its third major release, has
been rated by analysts such as D.H. Brown, the Yankee Group, and Hurwitz
Consulting as one of the most fully functional, modern,
commercial-strength, and standards-compliant UNIX implementations on the
market. Digital also offers a 64-bit version of its commercial-strength
OpenVMS operating system. While other major vendors are struggling to
introduce one 64-bit OS, Digital already has two on the market.

Oracle7 64-bit Database

Industry analysts are calling 64-bit database software the "killer
application" that will lead the migration to open systems in commercial
and technical markets. Today, only Digital offers customers the unique
advantages of 64-bit database software.

The combination of Oracle7 with the Oracle 64-bit Option, Digital UNIX,
StorageWorks and the AlphaServer 8400 system enables customers to access
data more than 250 times faster than is possible with 32-bit Oracle7.
Oracle7 running on the AlphaServer 8400 system delivers 10 times the
database performance of an IBM ES/9000 at one-tenth the price.

In December Digital opened the first of several planned Database Technology
Centers, located in Palo Alto, Calif., strengthening the company's
position as the leading provider of 64-bit VLM64 solutions for commercial
computing. The DBTC offers world-class database technology expertise
designed to help customers capitalize on the performance and productivity
advantages afforded by Digital's VLM64 technology and that of its database
software partners.

Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open client/server
solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information
systems. Digital's scalable Alpha platforms, storage, networking, software
and services, together with industry- focused solutions from business
partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global
marketplace.
 
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