ERNST & YOUNG CONSULTING WINS ACS SOFTWARE CHALLENGE USING BORLAND'S DELPHI
AND INTERBASE

SIDNEY, Australia -- October 19, 1995 -- A team of four IT development
specialists from Ernst & Young Consulting has won the Australian Computer
Society (ACS) National Software Challenge using Borland's Delphi and
InterBase software. The group was one of five teams required to create a
membership management system from scratch in a day and a half.

The Ernst & Young Consulting (EYC) team outperformed teams from Bankers
Trust, Progress Software, Usoft and CSC to claim the prestigious ASC award
in Brisbane on September 24.

"The combination of teamwork, superior methodology, and superior
application development tools allowed us to develop an application in a
fraction of the time it would normally take," said Russell Ives, a
director of Ernst & Young Consulting.

Ives attributes his team's success to the technical expertise of the
individual members, to the flexibility and functionality of the software
used, but most importantly to the rigorous application of best practice
techniques such as object-oriented design, iterative prototyping, and
effective team management.

"We have highly qualified specialists in data model development, report
design, application development and design, database administration, and
object-oriented analysis and design," said Ives. "A team is more than the
sum of its parts, though, and rapid application development is about
bringing the technical skills together in a highly coordinated and focused
way."

The competition was designed to allow the teams to demonstrate their
product skills, teamwork and individual expertise in IT development. The
aim of the Software Challenge was to develop a proof of concept prototype
to a specification provided on the first morning of the two-day Challenge.
At the conclusion of the competition, the prototype was demonstrated to
more than 200 ACS members at the ITWorld95 conference.

The initial task was to create an ACS membership management system which
could track new members and departures, as well as participation in
professional training events. The system also required the capability to
produce letters and reports and run queries on members' interests and
industry backgrounds.

The second phase of the Challenge was targeted at refining the application
from both a usability and presentation perspective.

The Challenge was assessed according to five primary criteria. These were
functionality, based on function points delivered; data model quality;
usability; client perspective; and team performance. The panel of judges
included world renowned data modeling expert Graham Simsion, and software
development specialist Larry Constantine. The EYC team placed either first
or equal second in every category throughout the competition.

The technology used by the EYC team for the first stage of the Challenge
consisted of Borland's Delphi Client/Server over Microsoft's SQL Server,
with PowerSoft SDesigner as the data modeling and database design tool.

However, towards the end of the first stage, an assessment by the EYC team
concluded that shifting the database to Borland's InterBase would generate
greater benefits in the forthcoming stages of the competition. The team
managed to change the entire database, consisting of some 20 tables,
within 30 minutes.

"We were naturally thrilled to have the opportunity to demonstrate the
power of Borland's Delphi/InterBase client/server solution through such a
competition," said Borland Australia's managing director, Ray Bradbery.

The switch to Borland's InterBase was required to avoid locking problems
that had surfaced in SQL Server the day before, slowing down the
development effort. In addition, InterBase's unique versioning engine made
it possible to alter the database schema even while the database tables
were in use. This essentially eliminated the impact of the database
changes which were required as part of the second day's competition.

Borland's Delphi was chosen as the best possible development tool
available, combining extremely rapid GUI design, with a sophisticated
object-oriented compiler technology. Since the EYC team specializes in
object-oriented analysis and design techniques, the use of another, non
object-oriented tool would have hamstrung the development effort as the
elegance of the OO application design would have to be compromised to fit
the tool. Instead, Delphi provided a smooth transition from
object-oriented design to object-oriented code and the delivery of the
winning application.

DELPHI AND DELPHI CLIENT/SERVER

Delphi for Windows and Delphi Client/Server are the next generation
development tools, combining the radical performance of an optimizing
native code compiler with a visual design environment and integrated
database access. Delphi's object-oriented, component-based design provides
unlimited extensibility, scalability and performance, while its native SQL
drivers and ODBC provide integrated database access.

Delphi is the winner of BYTE's Best Technology of Comdex 1994, Windows
Technical Journal Reader's Choice Award, Best of LAN Times 1995, Visual
Basic Programmer's Journal Editor's Choice, PC Week Labs Analyst Choice
Award to name a few.

BORLAND INTERBASE 4.0

A single user scalable copy of InterBase 4 is included in Borland's Visual
dBASE Client/Server and Delphi. Windows NT and Novell Netware versions of
InterBase running on Intel processors are priced at $650 per server
(includes 2 users), additional concurrent users are $195, and 10 packs are
$1670. Unix RISC based versions of InterBase 4 including SunOS, Solaris,
HP-UX, and AIX are priced starting at $10,000 per server.

BORLAND: MAKING DEVELOPMENT EASIER

Borland International Inc. (NASDAQ:BORL) is a leading provider of products
and services targeted to software developers. Borland is distinguished for
its high-quality software development tools, which include Delphi, Delphi
Client/Server, Borland C++, Visual dBASE, Paradox and InterBase. Borland's
award-winning products are supported through comprehensive programs for
small- and large-sized software developers, corporate developers, value
added resellers and systems integrators. Founded in 1983, Borland is
headquartered in Scotts Valley, California.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Copies of previous Borland press releases and additional
corporate and product information are available on Borland's Internet
World Wide Web (WWW) site, at http://www.borland.com.

Contact:
Keith Bigelow
Borland International Inc.
(408) 431-1242
kbigelow@wpo.borland.com

Paula Phelan
Nadel Phelan
(408) 335-7745
paula@nadelphelan.com
 
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