ONTOS DELIVERS OBJECT INTEGRATION SERVER (OIS) FOR ORACLE

NEWEST VIA COMPONENT PROVIDES OBJECT ACCESS TO ORACLE DATABASES

BURLINGTON, Mass. (March 27, 1995) -- ONTOS, Inc. announced today ONTOS OIS
for Oracle, another building block of the ONTOS Virtual Information
Architecture (ONTOS VIA), the company's object-oriented framework for
information access and distribution.

The ONTOS Object Integration Server (ONTOS OIS) product family allows
object-oriented applications to integrate transparently with disparate
data stores. ONTOS OIS uses agent technology to find information wherever
it resides on a network and return it to an application in object form.

Coming on the heels of OIS for Sybase, released last November, the delivery
of OIS for Oracle extends VIA's back-end integration capability to access
the world's leading relational databases. According to ONTOS officials, an
OIS for integrating mainframe databases is also under way. ONTOS also
currently provides services for building a custom OIS for accessing
mainframe or proprietary databases.

"Companies want the competitive advantage of developing high-value
applications with object-oriented tools. They also want to preserve their
existing databases and the valuable information they contain," said Gerard
Keating, ONTOS OIS Product Manager. "ONTOS OIS allows them to do both."

Aberdeen analyst Hugh Bishop commented, "Today's announcement proves that
ONTOS is on target with its VIA strategy. With products like OIS for
Oracle, ONTOS is delivering open, heterogeneous solutions that add
tremendous value by uniting resources across an enterprise framework."

MAKING LIFE EASIER FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPERS

OIS lets developers build applications that can access a variety of
disparate information sources without detailed knowledge of where or how
the data is stored. This makes it faster and easier to create
applications, and means that developers do not need to have expertise in
data storage and retrieval but can focus on meeting the information needs
of their customers.

To provide object access to a new data store for the first time, the
developer translates the existing database schema into an object model.
This process is supported by the graphical Schema Mapper, an easy-to-use
tool that is part of OIS. The schema mappings are then stored with an
object model that resides in the ONTOS OIS Object Repository.

BENEFITS OF THE ONTOS OIS OBJECT MODEL

ONTOS OIS object modeling capability provides a number of benefits:

* Map once, use many times. Once created, integration mappings are reusable
by multiple applications. New applications can take advantage of the
stored mappings to access disparate databases.

* Accommodates change. OIS insulates applications from changes to data
stores. A company can create, remove, or modify a database without having
to change its applications. Users can add new applications more quickly
and easily, since they write applications directly to the object model.

* A common language. The object model provides common semantics for
business concepts used throughout the enterprise. Information that was
visible only to those who spoke the language of a specific application or
database can now be made available in a more useful form, as objects.

MANAGING COMPLEXITY

ONTOS OIS uses agent technology to relieve the user of some of the
complexity of information access. Agents insulate the use of information
from the details of where and how it is stored. No longer must application
developers be concerned by technical details such as the number of joins
that a particular data access operation might require. The underlying
agent technology that supports the object model manages the complexity and
enables applications to be designed to address the true information needs
of the user.

"Software agents have the potential to dramatically simplify the use of
complex, distributed information networks," said Thomas W. Malone,
Professor of Information Systems at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management
and member of the ONTOS Technical Advisory Board. "Though such agents have
been part of research visions for years, it is exciting to see them now
being introduced into a commercial software product."

BRINGING NEW VALUE TO OLD INFORMATION

Daimler-Benz AG, one of ONTOS's strategic partners, has adopted ONTOS VIA
and plans to use ONTOS OIS to create a next-generation product development
environment. The first project with ONTOS technology within Daimler-Benz
was the creation of a product object model that Mercedes-Benz will use to
integrate CAD data with Bills of Material.

Dr. Gerhard Barth, Director of Information Technology, Research and
Technology at Daimler-Benz commented, "To remain competitive,
organizations need a unified perspective on their information resources,
the flexibility to create new and innovative uses for that information,
and an information architecture that preserves the massive investments in
disparate systems. ONTOS VIA is our choice because it provides all of
these capabilities."

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

OIS for Oracle is available in Q2'95. Prices for development licenses start
at $7,500. Value-added reseller programs are also available.

ABOUT ONTOS

ONTOS, Inc. develops and markets the Virtual Information Architecture
(ONTOS VIA), an object oriented framework for developing and deploying
distributed, network-based applications. ONTOS DB, the flagship product of
VIA, has been applied commercially in production applications ranging from
telecommunications and manufacturing to insurance and finance. ONTOS has
sales offices in the United States and the United Kingdom and distributors
in Europe and the Pacific Rim.

The company's directors are Frank T. Cary, former chairman and CEO of IBM;
F. Warren McFarlan, associate dean and director of the Division of
Research at the Harvard Business School; Paul J. Crowley, former president
of Computer Sciences Corporation's commercial business unit, CSC
Consulting Group; and C. Seth Cunningham, managing director, J.P. Morgan
Capital Corporation. The chairman of the board is Richard C. E. Morgan,
general partner at Wolfensohn Partners, L.P.

ONTOS is a Sybase Open Solutions Partner, an Oracle Business Alliance
member, and a voting member of the Object Management Group (OMG) and the
Object Database Management Group (ODMG). The company has strategic
relationships with Daimler-Benz AG and with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E),
the nation's largest investor-owned utility.
 
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