Rational Software Enters Data Modeling Market

Rational Software, the e-development company, announced the industry's first Unified Modeling Language (UML)-based data modeling and analysis solutions. Rational Rose Data Modeler, available separately or as part of Rational Suite AnalystStudio, allows business analysts, developers and data modelers to work together in one common methodology and notation to build higher quality e-business software in less time.

With the industry-wide adoption of the UML, business analysts, systems analysts and developers have benefited from sharing a standard modeling language that improves team communication and simplifies the complex process of software design. Until now, data modelers have worked independently from the rest of the software development team, resulting in frustrating communication breakdowns that can cost a project valuable time and resources.

By creating Rational Rose Data Modeler, Rational is expanding upon the success of its industry-leading Rational Rose for application development and business modeling and bringing it to the burgeoning data modeling market. With the addition of UML-based data modeling, Rational now offers the first and only complete UML-based development environment. Rational Rose Data Modeler improves communication between the team members and reduces learning time, resulting in a more effective and efficient process for developing data-critical e-business applications.

Industry-leading database companies endorse Rational's announcement

"We are delighted to have Rational Rose Data Modeler support Oracle8i," said Jeremy Burton, vice president Platform Marketing at Oracle. "Now software developers and database designers can work together in one modeling environment, leveraging the UML to unify modeling on e-business applications from the start of the project to the final database implementation."

"The addition of data modeling to Rational Rose enhances the existing application modeling capabilities of Rational Rose to further complement IBM VisualAge for Java," said Peter J. Tarrant, IBM's vice president, e-business marketing. "This new capability from Rational will work with IBM's Application Framework for e-business to provide a single, UML-based solution which will unify business analysts, data modelers and Java application developers building applications with DB2 Universal Database."

"Rational Rose Data Modeler is the only tool on the market today that uses the UML to bring all of the team members involved in the development process together," said Jon Roskill, director of SQL and Developer Tools marketing at Microsoft. "One of the many reasons we are working closely with Rational is based on the tremendous advantage this brings to developers using Visual Studio and Windows DNA to build Internet applications. Working together in both one tool and notation for the first time, teams gain an improved understanding of the impact of changes to requirements, application models and data models on a project's success."

"Rational Rose has become the industry standard for application development and business modeling," said Roger Oberg, vice president and general manager, Visual Modeling products for Rational Software. "Now, with the introduction of Rational Rose Data Modeler, Rational brings all the benefits of the UML and e-development to data modelers to unify them with the rest of the software team."

This UML-based approach streamlines communication where deficiencies used to exist and enables teams to collectively develop a solid enterprise architecture. Rational Suite AnalystStudio, which includes Rose Data Modeler, provides data analysts with robust tools for problem analysis, system definition and requirements management in one integrated solution. Now all business, system and data requirements and models can be captured and managed collectively. Associations between them can be traced for easy change-impact analysis.

Rational Suite AnalystStudio provides all analysts with the ability to analyze the problem space, define requirements for and model their business, system and data. In addition, analysts can manage those artifacts as they change throughout the project lifecycle. With the inclusion of Rose Data Modeler, Rational Suite AnalystStudio now folds the data models and requirements into the complete project, unifying cross-functional team members into a collaborative force. Previously isolated members of the data team now have easy access to the data requirements in context of the whole project requirements, and can trace their data models through the application models and system use-case models to the associated requirement text and attributes.

Using the UML for database modeling and design not only allows the communication to flow more freely and opens the barriers between teams, it provides a more sophisticated modeling environment. With the data model in the UML a data modeler can capture information like constraints, triggers and indexes directly on the diagram rather then as hidden, tagged values. With this information modeled, users can more easily communicate the database model in its entirety.

In addition to the benefits of implementing the UML for data modeling, Rational Rose Data Modeler provides the following capabilities:

• Object-Relational Mapping -- Object-relational mapping offers users the ability to track the migration of an object model to a data model. This form of mapping gives users a way to gain a deep understanding of the relationships between the application and the database, and continue to keep them up-to-date based on changes made during the development process.
• Database Round Trip Engineering -- Round trip engineering of the data model and database allows users either to create a data model based on the database structures through forward engineering or to create a database based on the data model through reverse engineering. The schema can be generated directly against the database or saved as a script file for future implementation and will include tables, columns, constraints, indexes, triggers and more.
• Referential Integrity -- Referential integrity in Rose Data Modeler enforces the integrity of the database by automatically migrating primary keys as foreign keys to the child table. When a relationship is created, users have a choice of how to enforce the referential integrity, either through a trigger or declarative referential integrity. The referential integrity options are specific to the database and are only available when supported by the specific database vendor and version.

Pricing and Availability

Rational Rose Professional Data Modeler Edition and an updated version of Rational Suite AnalystStudio will be available within 45 days of this announcement in both node-locked and floating licenses. Rational Rose Data Modeler will be available for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000 systems at a suggested U.S. list price, including one year of support, of $2400 for a node-locked license.

About Rational Software Corporation

Rational Software Corporation, the e-development company, helps organizations develop and deploy software for e-business, e-infrastructure, and e-devices through a combination of tools, services and software engineering best practices. Rational's e-development solution helps organizations overcome the e-software paradox by accelerating time to market while improving quality. Rational's integrated solution simplifies the process of acquiring, deploying and supporting a comprehensive software development platform, reducing total cost of ownership. IDC has recognized Rational as the market revenue leader in multiple segments of the software development life-cycle management market for three years in a row. Founded in 1981, Rational, one of the world's largest Internet software companies, had revenues of $411 million in its fiscal year that ended in March, 1999 and employs more than 2,000 people around the world. Additional information is available on the Internet at www.rational.com.

Contact Andrea J. Maasik of Rational Software Corporation, 781-676-2737, amaasik@rational.com, Website: www.rational.com.