BURLINGTON, MA, May 25, 2000—Cognos^® (NASDAQ:COGN; TSE:CSN) today announced the immediate availability of Axiant® 4GL 3.0, the latest version of its Windows-based high-productivity integrated development environment (IDE) for building and maintaining multi-tiered business applications.

As the visual development component of the Cognos PowerHouse® family of tools, Axiant dramatically increases developer productivity through the strong data dictionary, built-in business data processing models and flexible data access capabilities that it shares with the company’s popular server-based PowerHouse 4GL. By generating the core of an application automatically - including interactive screens, production reports and volume batch processes - Axiant is ideal for use in a rapid application development environment, often delivering productivity improvements of up to 90% when compared with traditional programming languages, such as COBOL, BASIC, C, C++ and Java.

Axiant’s LAN-based multi-user repository supports effective team development. From a single source it supports both platform and database independence, enabling applications to be deployed across clients and servers in a variety of flexible Windows-based (thin-client, fat-client, mobile and standalone), server-only (terminal) and web-based topologies - all using the proven PowerHouse engine for processing. Axiant supports simultaneous access to popular relational databases and many non-relational file systems and databases through native APIs, together with ODBC access to many other data sources. It also contains extensive facilities to help automate the migration of server-based PowerHouse 4GL applications to new deployment environments.

Axiant 4GL 3.0 includes many enhancements and new features, such as applying its object-based inheritance to runtime toolbars, form events and field events, as well as supporting the recently introduced PowerHouse Web product as a deployment environment - enabling Axiant-developed applications to be accessed through any standard web browser. The new and enhanced features of Axiant 4GL 3.0 add to an already functionally rich development environment and improve upon the manageability and deployment flexibility of Axiant applications.

"Axiant 4GL 3.0 is the defining release for this product," said Ed Shepherdson, director, Application Development Tools, Cognos. "Working extensively with our customers and application partners worldwide," he continued, "we have delivered a robust, multi-user, visual development environment where our customers can build, maintain and enhance their core business applications, while benefiting from the dramatic developer productivity improvements and solid, reliable deployment capabilities that only the Cognos 4GL technologies can deliver."

Cognos Axiant 4GL
Axiant 4GL is a member of the Cognos PowerHouse family of high-productivity application development tools, providing a visual integrated development environment (IDE) for creating Windows, web and terminal-based business solutions. Axiant-developed solutions may be deployed in a variety of highly flexible and scalable multi-tiered topologies utilizing clients based on Windows 95/98, Windows NT, or Windows 2000 and servers running under MPE/iX, OpenVMS, UNIX, Windows NT or Windows 2000. Details of Cognos Axiant 4GL can be found on the Cognos Web site at http://www.Cognos.com/axiant.