For immediate release

4D, Inc. Ships 4D WebSTAR Server Suite V for Mac OS X

— Unbelievably Fast, Easy as Always, and Secure Out of the Box —

SAN JOSE, Calif., October 9, 2001 — 4D, Inc., publishers of the 4th
Dimension RAD/RDBMS Environment and 4D WebSTAR Server Suite, today
announced the immediate availability of 4D WebSTAR Server Suite V, now
native for Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server.

With the ease-of-use people expect from WebSTAR, 4D WebSTAR Server Suite V
has preset security settings, unprecedented performance and is available
today, directly from 4D, Inc. at (http://www.webstar.com/) for a much lower
cost than ever before (see related release dated today).

“4D WebSTAR Server Suite V brings the industrial-strength Web server which
has always been the traditional de facto standard on the previous Macintosh
platform to the new Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server platforms,” explained
Brendan Coveney, president and CEO, 4D, Inc. “Now 4D WebSTAR V absolutely
screams with speed, while maintaining an emphasis on security and ease of
administration. Our groundbreaking new design also allows third-parties to
build plug-ins for 4D WebSTAR V with unsurpassed ease, enabling rapid
releases alongside our updates.”

“Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server deliver the power of Unix with the simplicity
of the Macintosh,” said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide
Developer Relations. “4D WebSTAR V is another excellent example of
developers taking advantage of advanced technology of Mac OS X and provides
professional Mac webmasters with an easy-to-use solution that takes just
minutes to deploy, yet is faster than ever.”

Fast, Easy, Secure Web Serving
4D WebSTAR Server Suite V is completely redesigned to take advantage of the
benefits of Mac OS X’s multiprocessor support, preemptive multitasking and
faster networking, which result in amazing server speeds. Beyond
multi-thread processes, a redesign of the caching architecture makes all
server modules radically faster.

Continuing with a tradition of ease-of-use, 4D WebSTAR Server Suite V is
now even easier to administer than ever. Now, Administrators can delegate
administrative authority to virtual hosts quickly and easily with reusable
settings for realms including allow/deny security access, without
compromising administration integrity or security of the entire system.
Remote administration is now more flexible than ever, and secure via SSL. A
wide range of logging options provides even easier server monitoring.

Security is preset out of the box with secure default settings, easily
configured SSL for encrypted traffic, flexible access control with realm
matching designed for HFS plus volumes, and MD5-digest authentication. 4D
WebSTAR Server Suite V comes with a radically faster Search engine, an
integrated FTP server and integrated WebDAV HTTP file service support.

Third-party Support
“Blue World Lasso Web Data Engine has been the leading companion product to
WebSTAR for several years, allowing developers to quickly and easily build
powerful data-driven Web sites,” said Bill Doerrfeld, CEO of Blue World
Communications, Inc. “We’re deeply committed to the WebSTAR community and
plan to fully support 4D WebSTAR V in our forthcoming Lasso Professional 5
product. Lasso Professional 5 and 4D WebSTAR V on Mac OS X will provide an
excellent combo for powerful yet easy Web database publishing.”

4D WebSTAR V now includes an expanded SDK with more sample code, utility
functions, and APIs which allow third-party developers to add their own
interfaces to the WebSTAR Admin Client. Developing 4D WebSTAR V plug-ins is
now simpler since the new Web server handles the low-level HTTP protocol
issues, leaving the plug-in developer free to focus on functionality.

Completely New Pricing For Lower Overall Cost of Ownership 4D, Inc. is
releasing 4D WebSTAR Server Suite V under a completely new pricing and code
release structure to provide the user with frequent updates, quality
support and a lower cost of ownership than ever before (see related release
dated today). 4D WebSTAR Server Suite V is available today directly from
(http://www.webstar.com/) for an initial license fee of $399, which
includes updates and support for one year, with additional support and
updates provided for a membership rate of $179 per year in WebSTAR
Community Central. Unrenewed licenses will not expire, however they also
will not accept important updates from 4D, Inc. or third-party vendors.

New licenses of 4D WebSTAR V are offered to academic institutions for an
educational price of $299, with upgrades at the same price for the general
public. Upgrades are available at $199 for current registered users of
WebSTAR v4.x, and $299 for current registered users of WebSTAR v3.x.
Cross-grades are available by calling the sales department at 4D, Inc. All
upgrades and cross-grades come with one year of support and software
updates, which is renewable after the first year for a $179/year membership
in WebSTAR Community Central.

About 4D, Inc.
Located in San Jose, California, 4D Inc. is the US distributor of 4th
Dimension and the 4D family of products, which has set the relational
database standard for over fifteen years. 4D Inc., formerly ACI US, Inc.,
publishes a tightly integrated suite of professional, cross-platform
Web-embedded development tools. 4D Inc is a 100 percent owned subsidiary of
4D SA, formerly ACI SA. StarNine Technologies is a 100 percent subsidiary
of 4D, Inc. StarNine publishes the award winning 4D WebSTAR Server Suite, a
complete set of four high-performance servers in one easy-to-use
application.

The URL for our new location on the Web is: http://www.4D.com/