ACI US news for immediate release

January 5, 2000. San Jose, CA.

Blue World and ACI Announce Agreement To Deliver New Web Database
Publishing Solution

Blue World Communications, Inc. and ACI US, Inc., publishers of the 4th
Dimension (4D) RAD/RDBMS Environment, announced an agreement to co-develop,
market and distribute Lasso 4D Web Data Engine, a powerful new Web database
publishing solution based upon the tight integration of Blue World Lasso
Web Data Engine and ACI US 4D Server. Lasso 4D Web Data Engine will
facilitate direct Lasso Web Data Engine connectivity to the fully
multi-threaded 4D Server with performance over twice as fast as
connectivity to common desktop database products.

"We're delighted to collaborate with ACI US to deliver a powerful solution
to customers who require a high-performance, robust, Web-friendly back-end
database for their Lasso Web applications," said Bill Doerrfeld, president
and CEO of Blue World Communications, Inc. "Lasso 4D Web Data Engine is the
answer to numerous requests from customers who desire an easy to use,
cross-platform multi-threaded database that tightly integrates with the
Lasso product line."

"We're pleased to partner with Blue World to bring widely used Lasso
technology to the hundreds of thousands of users within the 4D community,"
said Brendan Coveney, president of ACI US. "Both established 4D developers
and beginning Web application developers will find Lasso 4D Web Data Engine
delivers an unparalled combination of power, performance, ease-of-use and
flexibility."

About Lasso 4D Web Data Engine

Lasso 4D Web Data Engine is the first Web application server solution
offering direct connectivity to 4D Server via the 4D Open Application
Programming Interface. Lasso 4D Web Data Engine will deliver the first
Lasso data source module for direct connectivity to a high-performance
multi-threaded database offering enhanced ease-of-use over ODBC
connectivity. Lasso 4D Web Data Engine will provide robust support for 4D
features including relations, images, lists and connection caching. What's
more, Lasso 4D Web Data Engine installations can communicate with 4D Server
running on a different machine and/or platform facilitating maximum
flexibility with Web application server configuration. Given the
database-independent design of Lasso, migrating current Lasso solutions to
Lasso 4D Web Data Engine will be possible with little or no modification to
one's code. Further, to ease the migration process, ACI US provides 4D
Assimilator (http://www.acius.com/assimilator.html), a new tool that
converts ODBC-compliant databases to 4D databases.

Pricing and availability for Lasso 4D Web Data Engine are not available at
this time. A technology preview of Lasso 4D Web Data Engine will be
showcased at Macworld Expo January 5-8 in San Francisco at various
locations including the Blue World and ACI US booths.

Industry Leaders Support Blue World and ACI US Partnership

Numerous leaders within the rapidly growing Web server tools and database
information management industries applaud the partnership between Blue
World and ACI US.

"We're thrilled to see Blue World and ACI US partner to deliver a
high-performance Web database solution destined to be very well received
within the WebSTAR community," said Scott Steward, president of Berkeley,
Calif. based StarNine Technologies (http://www.starnine.com/), creators of
WebSTAR Server Suite, the first commercial Web server.

"Blue World has moved quickly to respond to the growing number of requests
for direct connectivity to high-performance multi-threaded databases," said
Frank Wible, president of RFA Digital (http://www.rfadigital.com), a
leading Web application and hosting firm with clients like Cisco Systems
who utilize one of the many Lasso solutions developed by RFA. "The speed at
which Blue World
responds to customer requests is a key reason why we've standardized on the
Lasso product line for all our Web application development and hosting
needs. In our continuing support, RFA Digital will announce their new site
4DHOST.NET first quarter 2000."

"The e-commerce community has asked for direct connectivity between
Ch-Ching! and multi-threaded databases for serving high-performance
e-commerce sites," said Allon Bendavid, president of Imacination Software
(http://www.imacination.com/), creators of Ch-Ching!, the Lasso-powered
Instant E-commerce product. "With Lasso'sdatabase-independent architecture,
our Lasso-based e-commerce applications will easily adapt to 4D databases
and accounting products providing enhanced performance, reliability and
integrity over options currently available."

"We're pleased to see direct connectivity between the popular Lasso Web
Data Engine and 4D," said John Beaulieu of PDM
Inc.(http://www.pdm-inc.com), a leading custom software developer. "The
partnership between Blue World and ACI US will benefit all developers and
users within the 4D community."

"We're delighted to see Lasso technology brought to the thriving 4D
developer community," said Michael Erickson, President of Automated
Solutions Group (http://www.asgsoft.com/), a leading consultancy
specializing in custom 4D database solutions.

"We expect Lasso 4D Web Data Engine to be very well received within the 4D
developer community," said Steven G. Willis, President of Deep Sky
Technologies, Inc. (http://www.deepskytech.com/). "It should be a big step
towards providing tools that many developers new to the 4D environment are
already familiar with." Based in Vero Beach, Florida, Deep Sky
Technologies, Inc., develops, hosts, and supports a wide variety of Web
sites and online services using the 4th Dimension line of products.

About ACI US
------------
ACI US, Inc. is the US publisher of 4th Dimension and the 4D family of
products, which has set the relational database standard for over fifteen
years. ACI publishes a tightly integrated suite of professional,
cross-platform web-imbedded development tools. ACI US, Inc. is the U.S.
subsidiary of ACI which is headquartered in Clichy, France.

About Blue World
----------------
Blue World Communications (http://www.blueworld.com) delivers
cross-platform software tools allowing Web developers and designers to
quickly build and deploy powerful data-driven Web applications. Blue World
provides the Lasso Web Data Engine (http://www.blueworld.com/lasso/), Lasso
Studio for Dreamweaver (http://www.blueworld.com/LassoStudio/), the Blue
World Store (http://store.blueworld.com) and the Blue World ListSearch
service (http://listsearch.blueworld.com) in fulfillment of its mission to
bring business to the Internet. Having been cited as the State of
Washington's 12th fastest growing technology company, Blue World, based in
Bellevue, WA is a privately held company founded in 1992.
ACI US, Inc. 4th Dimension RDBMS
3031 Tisch Way, Suite 900 Products & Services
San Jose, CA 95128 USA

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