FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 7, 2002

BLUE WORLD ANNOUNCES LASSO VS PHP WHITE PAPER

Report highlights differences in performance, ease-of-use, security,
architecture, programming features and cost.

Bellevue, WA–March 7, 2002–Blue World Communications, Inc.–pioneers of
the Web Data Engine(tm)–today announced the publication of a comprehensive
white paper report comparing Blue World Lasso Professional 5 to PHP 4.1.x.
The 56 page report includes detailed coverage of key topics of interest to
Web application developers in search of a high performance, robust, easy to
use tool for building powerful data-driven Web applications. Authored by
Lasso and PHP expert programmers Lee McNeil and Duncan Cameron, the report
provides detailed side-by-side code comparisons, a feature comparison chart
and performance benchmarks.

“The Lasso vs PHP report shows how Lasso Professional 5 beats PHP,” said
Bill Doerrfeld, CEO of Blue World. “This white paper will further increase
awareness as to the significant performance, ease-of-use, architecture,
security and total cost of ownership benefits of using Lasso over competing
offerings such as PHP.”

Fast, Easy, and Platform Agnostic

Lasso outpaced PHP by over 200% in select benchmark tests comparing
performance, specifically when executing class libraries. Lasso also beat
PHP on all performance tests on Windows and virtually all tests on
Macintosh. In all tests involving database access, Lasso proved the faster
of the two. And, in cases where under light load PHP scored faster, as the
load increased, Lasso consistently performed better than PHP. This is
principally due to Lasso’s distributed architecture and operation
out-of-process from the Web server which positions Lasso Professional 5 as
a true Web application server product designed for heavy load.

Programming in Lasso vs PHP is also highlighted in the report with numerous
side-by-side code comparisons where the amount of code required for Lasso
is significantly less involved than that required by PHP in normal coding
situations. Lasso’s programming language is based on clear naming
conventions which aids in getting started and maintaining projects as
opposed to a fractured and loosely-defined language in PHP which causes
confusion and slows the development process.

Lasso operates identically across platforms whereas with PHP, significant
functionality is lost migrating from one platform to another. This makes it
very difficult to develop on one platform and deploy on another when using
PHP. Lasso’s platform-agnostic design makes it very easy to develop and
deploy on the same or different platforms, easing the development and
testing process for Web developers.

Secure, Complete Administration, and Database Abstraction

Lasso provides a industry-first built-in security system controlling all
aspects of serving data-driven Web applications whereas PHP provides no
built-in security controls. With PHP, developers need to build their own
security system, which would require literally months of coding to match
the depth of security features provided by default with Lasso.

Lasso provides a complete Web browser based administration interface which
controls all aspects of setup and administration. What’s more, the
administration interface facilitates the creation of MySQL databases right
within a Web browser along with instant browsing and editing data within
databases with no coding required. PHP provides no administration interface.

Communicating with databases is consistent across multiple databases due to
the intelligent database abstraction layer provided with Lasso. With PHP,
special queries and routines need to be established for each type of data
source. Lasso’s database abstraction and connection information caching
also contributes to better performance over PHP.

Robust Architecture and Compiled Apps

Lasso Professional 5 provides a robust distributed architecture which
facilitates multi CPU configurations. PHP operates in-process within
supported Web servers and is based on a process-pooled architecture which
suffers under heavy loads. Lasso’s multi-threaded single process
architecture facilitates the creation of global server-wide application
variables which is not possible via PHP. Lasso provides the ability to
build and serve compiled, encrypted Web applications called LassoApps. This
protects the developer’s source code and provides an efficient method of
serving Web applications. With PHP, developers must purchase commercial
add-on products totalling over $3300 (USD) to receive comparable
functionality.

More Features and Less Costly

Lasso includes a wealth of features not provided in PHP including the
ability to automatically schedule events and numerous error handling
controls. Lastly, while a basic installation of PHP can be downloaded and
used for free, to match the set of features provided by default with Lasso
Professional 5, a PHP setup would need to include additional third party
commercial add-ons which bring the total comparable price to nearly three
times the cost of Lasso Professional 5 Standard Edition and over ten times
the cost of Lasso Professional 5 Developer Edition. This actual product
cost combined with the overall productivity costs involved with time saved
due to ease-of-use developing and administering Lasso-based solutions makes
the total cost of ownership significantly lower (by thousands of dollars)
when using Lasso than when using PHP.

Availability

The Lasso vs PHP white paper is available in PDF for Web download at
(ftp://ftp.blueworld.com/reports/Lasso_vs_PHP.pdf).

About Blue World

Blue World Communications (www.blueworld.com) delivers cross-platform
software tools allowing Web developers and designers to quickly build and
serve powerful data-driven Web sites. Blue World provides Lasso
Professional 5, Lasso Web Data Engine, Lasso Studio and Blue World
ListSearch service in fulfillment of its mission to bring business to the
Internet(tm).