Open Text Introduces Basis JDBC And Basis Perl DBI Drivers

New Web application development interfaces dramatically expand the richness and openness of BASIS solutions

Waterloo, ON - 1999-10-05 - Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSE: OTC), the leading provider of collaborative knowledge management and corporate portal solutions, today announced the release of the BASIS® Java Database Connectivity (JDBC ) and BASIS Perl DBI Drivers, enhancing the accessibility and openness of BASIS Web applications and advancing BASIS integration with Open Text s collaborative portal solution, MyLivelink .

The BASIS JDBC Driver enables Web developers to build applications that take advantage of such BASIS features as searching against hybrid databases of relational, bibliographic, and textual information. Open Text s strategy of using standards such as Java and JDBC lowers the cost of application development and increases interoperability between BASIS and other applications.

The BASIS Perl DBI Driver exposes BASIS server functionality through Perl, thereby extending the ability to customize Open Text s BASIS WEBserver product. The BASIS Perl DBI Driver is an Open Source Initiative this means that binary and source code is licensed at no charge, encouraging BASIS customers around the world to contribute their own functional extensions to the product.

Most of my BASIS clients require sophisticated security, data modeling, and search functionality and BASIS delivers on these needs, said Bill Johnson, President, Technology Concepts and Design Inc., a BASIS solution provider. These new tools allow us to implement portable Web applications without compromising any BASIS functionality.

These tools continue to lower the cost-of-ownership for BASIS solutions by providing more open configuration choices of Web application servers connected to BASIS database servers. In addition to the existing options of NT-to-NT, NT-to-Unix, and NT-to-OpenVMS, the BASIS JDBC and BASIS Perl DBI Drivers will be certified for new Unix-to-Unix and Unix-to-OpenVMS options and will support Linux and Apache environments.

Corporations today are seeking more open solutions in order to do business on the Web, said Mike Cunningham, President, Harvard Computing Group Inc. BASIS drivers for JDBC and Perl should make it easier for organizations to confidently expand their BASIS usage given Open Text s endorsement of Open Source licensing and leading-edge open standards.

He added "There could be significant interest for companies and organizations using this technology in the emerging Application Service Provider market, thus making a high performance remote document repository available to an increasingly distributed workforce."

Additionally, BASIS and Techlib customers can use BASIS JDBC to integrate BASIS applications with Open Text s Collaborative Knowledge Portal offering, MyLivelink. BASIS users of MyLivelink would then be empowered to personalize their screen layout, record their preferences for using BASIS, and have a single interface to access other repositories of information alongside BASIS.

With the growing use of the Web as a mission-critical business tool, companies require enhanced functionality and the most open environment possible, said Dan Latendre, Vice President, Product Marketing, Open Text Corporation. Open Text is delivering that. By offering these two new interfaces, we are demonstrating our continued commitment to BASIS and Techlib, and our ability to provide the most powerful suite of integrated knowledge management applications available on the market.

MyLivelink and the new BASIS development tools will be featured at Open Text s upcoming LiveLinkup 99 User Conference in Orlando, Florida, from October 17-19, 1999. Please visit www.opentext.com for more information or to register.

Availability -- The BASIS JDBC Driver is available now and is priced at $15,000 US per BASIS server. The BASIS Perl DBI Driver will be available by November 1 and is licensed under the terms required by the Open Source Initiative.

For more information, please contact

Margaret E. Dobbin
Director, Industry Analyst Relations
Open Text Corporation
+1-519-888-7111 ext.2410
mdobbin@opentext.com

Sarah Burns
High Road Communications
(416) 368-8348
sburns@highrd.com