OASIS Member News: Chrystal Software Announces Availability of Astoria 3.5

[Nancy Mumford <NMumford@chrystal.com>]

CHRYSTAL SOFTWARE ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF ASTORIA 3.5

New Version of Content Management System Enhances XML Support

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 7, 2000 - Chrystal Software, a Xerox New Enterprise company,
announced today the availability of Astoria 3.5, a content management
solution for organizations who produce technical information using XML and
SGML to represent their documents. Astoria manages documents created in
FrameMaker+SGML and edited in most popular tools such as XMetaL and
FrameMaker+SGML.
 
"Astoria's core content management ser-vices are tuned to provide optimum
power at a very granular component level," said David Garnett, Chrystal
Software president and chief executive officer. "This new version of Astoria
underscores our commitment to the growing XML user base and the maturing XML
applications for Web sites."

Astoria goes beyond traditional document management by managing the content
of a document itself as a series of pieces or components. A component is a
piece of information that can be used independently, such as a paragraph, a
chapter, an instructional procedure, a warning note, a part number, an order
quantity, a graphic, a side-bar story, a video clip, or one of an infinite
variety of additional information types. 

The technology enhancements in Astoria 3.5 also benefit Eclipse, Chrystal
Software's content management solution for Web sites. 

"Astoria is at the heart of Eclipse, which manages and delivers to the Web
highly configurable XML-based content, assembled on the fly and based on a
combination of characteristics known about the visitor," added Garnett.
"This results in a highly personalized and compelling online experience for
visitors to Eclipse-powered Web sites."

Astoria 3.5 includes several changes of interest to integrators and custom
appli-cation developers:

* In addition to C++, Astoria 3.5 now supports Java, Perl and Python
programming tools in its software development kit, providing significantly
more opportunities for the development of custom applications.

* Updated bridges to XmetaL 2.0 and FrameMaker+SGML 6.0.

* New Unicode API for enhanced support of multilingual applications.

Additional Astoria functionality includes retrieving, accessing, versioning
and securing each component individually. It also maintains the link between
each component within the document or documents. Information can also be
personalized and printed or delivered to the Web and CD-ROM. 

In addition, a suite of Web-based Astoria clients enable users to read,
review and edit documents over the Internet. This capability is part of the
Web Services Suite: 

Web Services(tm) is an add-on product to Astoria that fits into a standard
Web architecture. Users only need a browser to access the document library.
Administrators can easily assign access privileges as needed.

Web Services Advisor(tm) is a tool that not only eliminates the paper review
process, but it also greatly enhances the quality and focus of the review
process. This solution enables collaborative review and component-based
commentary via the Web, improving the overall quality of documents for
publication.

Correspondent(tm) enables Web-based editing for all documents and SGML and
XML components. File check-out/check-in works with graphics, word processing
files, and any other file format client software from a standard Web
browser.

About Chrystal Software

Chrystal Software delivers high-performance content management solutions for
Web-based applications, as well as traditional publishing applications.
Chrystal also markets content management products for high-end publishing
and single-source authoring organizations.

The company has a worldwide presence with partners in key markets and
customers in automotive, aerospace, telecommunications equipment, publishing
and other industries. Customers include Sun Microsystems, Rover Group,
Lockheed Martin, Sun Microsystems, Dell Computers, Texas Instruments, Lucent
Technologies, Micro Compact Car AG and Daimler Chrysler.

Contact: 
Nancy Mumford, Chrystal Software, 858-676-7791, nmumford@chrystal.com

NOTE TO EDITORS: Copyright 2000, Chrystal Software, Incorporated.  All
rights reserved.  All brand and product names are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective companies.

XEROX®, The Document Company® and the digital X® are trademarks of XEROX
CORPORATION.