Informix Boosts Business Intelligence for Choice Hotels -Informix' Extended Parallel Server and Ardent DataStage Provide "No Limits" Data Warehouse Infrastructure for World's Second-Largest Hotel Franchiser- MENLO PARK, Calif.—July 31, 2000—Informix® Corporation (NASDAQ: IFMX), the technology leader in software infrastructure for the i.economy, today announced that Choice Hotels International (NYSE:CHH) has selected Informix' Extended Parallel Server™ (XPS) and Ardent™ DataStage® as key components in its information infrastructure for business intelligence. Together, Informix' XPS and Ardent DataStage will help Choice Hotels to manage and track its global operations including Reservations and Occupancy Analysis, Frequent Traveler Program Management, Corporate Help Desk Data, Customer Service, and Geographic Property Transactions. "As a fast-growing franchiser, Choice needed a 'no ceilings' approach to data warehousing, with no limit to database size, number of users, type, or complexity of query," said Bill Plants, director of database systems, Choice Hotels. "XPS and Ardent DataStage offer us a powerful solution to competitively manage our business intelligence infrastructure and respond to market trends in a timely manner." Choice Hotels is currently using the combination of Informix' XPS and Ardent DataStage to support a central reservation system, serving 4,900 hotels around the world. More than 1,500 end users at five remote reservation centers and corporate headquarters rely on the central reservation system for up-to-the-minute information on room availability, rates, and usage. In addition to Reservation and Occupancy Analysis, the Informix combination will also support other Choice IT systems going forward, including Frequent Traveler Program Management, Corporate Help Desk Data, Customer Service, and Geographic Property Transaction. According to Mike Wipperfeld, vice president of marketing of the i.Intelligence™ business group at Informix, "The flexibility, functionality and performance of the Informix products provided the optimal solution for managing Choice's massive network of disparate global information sources. Our solution allows for an effective centralization of corporate data that Choice demands to accurately assess and service its properties, customers, vendors and overall operations on a daily basis." Aabout Ardent DataStage Ardent DataStage provides the enterprise business intelligence infrastructure for more than 1,200 of the world's leading companies-enabling them to turn corporate data into competitive advantage. Companies rely on Ardent DataStage's powerful data integration capabilities to extract, transform and integrate enterprise data into their data warehouses, analytical applications, and eBusiness solutions. Ardent DataStage uniquely addresses enterprise-level business intelligence requirements, including: native support for Web-based, mainframe, relational and ERP data; enterprise-wide business intelligence meta data management; integrated data quality assessment and cleansing; and enterprise-class performance and scalability. About Informix XPS Informix XPS is a high-end database server that provides customers with the best choice for business-critical enterprise-wide data warehousing. Informix XPS enables fast data loading and comprehensive data management to support some of the world's largest and most heavily utilized business intelligence environments. Global 2000 companies in a broad range of industries including retail, healthcare, government, telecommunications, finance, and transportation rely on XPS's extensive performance-enhancing technologies to make more profitable, informed, business decisions from complex, query-intensive analytical applications. Informix XPS provides: no ceilings scalability; optimized query performance in complex, ad hoc environments; fully parallel load functionality; superior data access performance; data skew management tools; and query management tools. About Choice Hotels International Choice Hotels International, based in Silver Spring, Md., is the world's second-largest hotel franchiser with more than 4,900 hotels representing more than 400,000 rooms open and under development in 39 countries. Its Comfort, Quality, Clarion, Sleep, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn and MainStay Suites brands serve more than 90 million guests annually. Additional information may be found on the Choice Internet site, www.choicehotels.com About Informix Informix Software is the technology leader in software infrastructure solutions for the Internet-providing a fast, simple and complete way to bring businesses to the Web. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., Informix is the first and only company to integrate e-business and business intelligence on a true Internet infrastructure. The company's highly scalable Web engines, together with its personalized content management, real-time analytics and media asset management capabilities, offer customers a unique competitive advantage. For more information, contact the nearest sales office or visit the Web site at www.informix.com. Comfort, Quality, Econo Lodge, Sleep, Clarion, Rodeway Inn and MainStay Suites are registered trademarks and service marks of Choice Hotels International, Inc. © 2000 Informix Corporation. All rights reserved. The following are trademarks of Informix Corporation or its affiliates, one or more of which may be registered in the U.S. or other jurisdictions: Informix®, Extended Parallel Server™, Ardent™, DataStage® and i.Intelligence™.