Blue World Releases Lasso 4D Web Data Engine

Blue World Communications Inc -- pioneers of the Web Data Engine announced the immediate availability of Lasso 4D Web Data Engine. Lasso 4D Web Data Engine is the result of the co-development, marketing and distribution agreement between Blue World and ACI, publishers of the 4th Dimension (4D) family of database products.

"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," said Bill Doerrfeld, president and CEO of Blue World Communications Inc.

"We're pleased to partner with Blue World to bring widely used Lasso technology to the burgeoning 4D community," said Rob Wylie, General Manager of ACI UK. "Both established 4D developers and Web application developers will find Lasso 4D Web Data Engine delivers an unparalleled combination of power, performance, ease-of-use and flexibility. Our benchmarks confirm that the Lasso 4D Web Data Engine when coupled with 4D Server will offer dramatic improvements in database performance over existing implementations of Lasso with other desktop databases".

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 delivers 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 provides robust support for 4D features including relations, images (Macintosh only), choice 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 is possible with little or no modification to one's code. Further, to ease the migration process, ACI provides 4D Assimilator www.acius.com/assimilator.html, a new tool that converts ODBC-compliant databases to 4D databases. Current Lasso Web Data Engine customers can add 4D functionality by purchasing and installing the Lasso 4D Data Source Module, the separately available data source module component of Lasso 4D Web Data Engine.

Availability

Electronic download versions of Lasso 4D Web Data Engine are immediately available for purchase via the Blue World Store store.blueworld.com at standard pricing from $799 to $999 depending upon edition and configuration. Boxed versions will be available later this month. The Lasso 4D Data Source Module component of Lasso 4D Web Data Engine is also available to Lasso FMP and Lasso ODBC Web Data Engine registered customers for electronic download at $599. A free 30-day evaluation version of Lasso 4D Web Data Engine and Lasso 4D Data Source Module is available via the Blue World download Web page at www.blueworld.com/download.

Special Promotional Pricing

Customers who purchase any edition or configuration of Lasso 4D Web Data Engine or Lasso 4D Data Source Module save $200 over standard pricing listed above now through June 30, 2000 when ordered direct from Blue World via the Blue World Store.

About Blue World

Blue World Communications 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 Lasso Web Data Engine, Lasso Studio for Dreamweaver, Blue World Store and Blue World ListSearch service in fulfillment of its mission to bring business to the Internet.

About ACI

ACI was founded in 1984 in Paris, France. The company designs, develops, publishes and distributes the award-winning 4th Dimension (4D) database and rapid application development tool in single-user and client-server versions. 4th Dimension allows developers to create any type of database application, from simple contact management systems and electronic product catalogues to sophisticated multimedia applications and full-scale accounting packages. 4th Dimension's ease of use, reduced development time and straightforward installation and maintenance make it an unbeatable, cost-effective database solution for organisations of all sizes. ACI's products are supported through company and independent developer programs, value-added resellers and systems integrators. 4th Dimension is present in over 50 countries via a network of distributors and is used extensively by over 7,000 professional database developers and 4 million end-users worldwide. ACI is an international company with subsidiaries and offices in France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Japan.

ACI owns StarNine Technologies, publisher of the award winning WebSTAR Server Suite 4.2, a complete set of four high-performance servers in one easy to use application.

Contact Sharol Hance, Blue World Communications Inc 425-646-0288 x 228 sharol@blueworld.com, Rob Wylie General Manager ACI UK Ltd +44 (0)1625 536178.