Leading Data Warehouse RDBMS Vendor Proposes Real-World Benchmark Over
                     Existing 'Irrelevant' Specifications

    DCI DATA WAREHOUSE CONFERENCE, ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Red
Brick(R) Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: REDB), The Data Warehouse Company(TM), today
announced a company-wide initiative to extend its leadership in delivering the
most important factor for success in data warehousing -- performance.
    Red Brick launched its "Performance is Everything(TM)" initiative by
proposing new "real-world" performance benchmark criteria more appropriate for
measuring data warehouse relational database (RDBMS) performance than
existing "irrelevant" benchmarks.
    Red Brick plans to make the proposed benchmark available to users,
vendors, analysts and press, and invite all parties to consider it as an
alternative for measuring data warehouse RDBMS performance.  The criteria and
other information are available on Red Brick's World Wide Web site at
http://www.redbrick.com under "Performance is Everything."  (see related
"benchmark" press release issued today)
    Red Brick made the announcements today at the industry's largest data
warehouse conference and trade show devoted to data warehousing, the DCI Data
Warehouse Conference.
    "We have more than 10 years of data warehousing experience and when we ask
organizations and analysts what criteria should be used for evaluating data
warehouse RDBMSs, they cite data and user scalability, load and query
performance, advanced indexing and response times.  These are all performance
criteria," said Chris Erickson, president and CEO of Red Brick.
    "Without performance, nothing else matters.  We think the industry has
been distracted by OLTP-oriented RDBMS vendors promoting  'universal' or 'one
size fits all' strategies.  The truth is these strategies produce products
that are not optimal due to the inherent performance trade-offs they must
make to serve their general-purpose requirements," Erickson said.
    "There are two consistent conclusions that emerge from talking to
successful data warehouse users:

    1) there is an irrefutable link between database performance and their
organization's ability to maximize quantifiable business benefits from their
data warehouse applications; and,
    2) the same link exists between the performance advantages of the
core database and IT's ability to implement and support any type of data
warehouse application," said Erickson.

    Red Brick is the industry's fastest growing database company and the
leading provider of high-performance relational database (RDBMS) products and
service for data warehouse applications.  The company's flagship product, Red
Brick Warehouse 5.0, is recognized as the world's fastest and most scalable
relational database for data warehousing, including data marts, OLAP, and data
mining.
    All areas of Red Brick will make the "Performance is Everything"
initiative the focus their respective efforts, including product development,

professional services and support, sales, marketing, finance, administration
and human resources.

    Real-World Data Warehousing Benchmark Proposed
    Red Brick today released a proposed new set of performance criteria that
reflect real-world data warehousing requirements as described by actual data
warehousing end users.  Red Brick is working with independent consultants to
define a benchmark suite that reflects these requirements.  No existing
benchmark adequately addresses these specialized requirements.
    The most commonly referenced decision support benchmark currently is the
Transaction Processing Performance Council Benchmark D (TPC-D), yet even the
Council disclaims the usefulness of the benchmark in the preamble of its
specification document dated Nov. 9, 1996:

    "...TPC-D should not be used as a substitute for a specific customer
application benchmarking when critical capacity planning and/or product
evaluation decisions are contemplated."

    "The substantiation of our performance leadership to-date comes directly
from hundreds of our customers and is the product of their own side-by-side
benchmark testing of Red Brick Warehouse against Oracle, Informix, Sybase and
IBM," said Steve O'Brien, director, product marketing for Red Brick.  "We will
further substantiate our claims through independent real-world benchmark
testing of our database, and will publicize those results as they become
available."

    Industry and End User Opinions About Data Warehousing Performance
    Many customers and industry analysts already have gone public with
statements supporting performance as the most important factor for data
warehouse success and Red Brick as a performance leader.
    A compilation of the customer and analyst statements follows:

    Industry Analysts and Opinion Leaders:
     "The real value in these technologies is in the speed of retrieval.
After about three months, all the criteria you used to pick a data warehouse
go away except one -- performance."
    -- Alan Paller, director of research, The Data Warehousing Institute.

    "Red Brick has enjoyed success with a 'data warehouse' strategy and
product that performs extremely well for applications designed to utilize the
star schema.  Product optimization for star schemas has given Red Brick a
strong performance advantage over traditional RDBMS products..."
    -- Kevin Strange and John Radcliffe, Gartner Group.

    "Red Brick Warehouse has scorched other RDBMSs in many decision support
benchmarks conducted by customers and prospects.  Red Brick will maintain its
performance lead for the foreseeable future."
    -- Wayne Eckerson, Patricia Seybold Group.

     "Despite all the improvement in hardware technology, performance is still
the top concern among database customers," said Charles Phillips, Morgan
Stanley & Co.

    Red Brick Customers:
    "The Red Brick solution is screamingly fast.  Queries that used to take
hours on the mainframe alone now run in a matter of seconds...with the data
warehouse, we're achieving more targeted ordering, lower inventory levels and
a lower cost of goods overall."
    -- Longs Drug Stores.

    "Benchmark results showed Red Brick loading data in one hour against ten
hours for other systems...Red Brick's query performance was consistently five
to ten times faster...Red Brick returned consistently superior performance
results even when large amounts of data were added to the warehouse."
    -- Hewlett-Packard WCSO Information Management Program.

    "The results of Red Brick's focus upon high-speed data loading and
retrieval shone during General Mills' comparative performance evaluations...
with insights gained from the data warehouse, marketing can devise programs to
increase General Mills' sales and increase turns and profitability for its
customers."
    -- General Mills.

    "H.E.B....brought its (Red Brick-based) category management application
from design to roll-out in less than nine months..."
    -- H.E.B.

    About Red Brick Systems, Inc.
    Red Brick Systems, Inc., based in Los Gatos, Calif., is the industry's
fastest growing database company and the leading provider of high-performance
relational database products for data warehousing.  Its flagship product, Red
Brick Warehouse 5.0, is the world's fastest and most scalable relational
database for data warehousing, including data marts, online analytical
processing (OLAP), and data mining.  Red Brick customers are successful
because the company's high-performance products and service enable more users
to analyze more data and make better decisions faster.
    Information about Red Brick and "Performance is Everything" is available
on the World Wide Web at http://www.redbrick.com.  News releases and corporate
background information may also be retrieved by fax.  For an index of
available materials, call 800-758-5804, and enter PIN #105756.
    NOTE:  Red Brick and Red Brick and logo are registered trademarks, and The
Data Warehouse Company and Performance is Everything are trademarks, of Red
Brick Systems, Inc.  All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the
property of their respective holders.

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