OTTAWA and FREMONT, Calif., July 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the development of a universal development platform, and Versant Corporation , an industry leader in specialized data management and data persistence software, today announced that the JSR220-ORM Project proposed by Versant in March of this year has been approved by Eclipse. The Eclipse JSR220-ORM Project will produce standards-based, object-relational mapping design-time tooling in Eclipse. JSR220 is the specification defining the standard for object-relational mapping (ORM) in Java. Object-relational mapping has emerged in the last year as a critical missing piece of software architecture in the drive to make the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform more powerful and easier to program. The Eclipse JSR220-ORM Project is designed to bring common tooling to the Java and Eclipse community to expand programming productivity and the value of Eclipse.

"The creation of the JSR220-ORM project is an important milestone for the Eclipse community," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, Inc. "This project will provide a common framework for delivering productivity and consistency in the important area of object-relational mapping."

The goal of the JSR220-ORM Project is to provide visual development tools that facilitate round-trip engineering when using the JSR 220 (EJB 3.0 persistence) and JSR 243 (Java Data Objects) approaches to persistence. It will provide an implementation that is extensible to accommodate other persistence standards and can be extended to generate artifacts for alternative object-relational mapping runtimes. This project internally uses the Eclipse Modeling Framework and the Eclipse Data Tools Project Schema Model for consistency with the Eclipse framework, which eases integration and adoption in other projects.

"I am pleased the JSR220-ORM Project is transitioning to this new phase in the Eclipse development process," said Robert Greene, vice president of product strategy at Versant. "It solidifies Versant's commitment to the Eclipse community and moves the Eclipse Platform one step closer to providing important ORM tooling for this critical technology segment," Greene added. "The members of the JSR220-ORM Project are looking forward to the first milestone release in early August when the Eclipse community will be in a position to take advantage of this new technology approach. The first milestone will deliver Forward, and Meet-in-the-Middle mapping for JSR220 runtimes. Eclipse developers of Java applications using relational database technology will finally begin to enjoy the ease of development long promised in the emerging JSR220 specification."

Robert Greene is the project lead for the Eclipse JSR220-ORM Project. Scott Ambler, a leading authority on object-relational mapping has joined the project as a developer and architectural advisor. Dirk Le Roux, a committer on this project, was also approved as a committer to the Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project acknowledging this project's code and architectural contributions to the shared frameworks.

"The JSR220-ORM Project is an important new addition to the Eclipse Technology Project," said John Graham, of Sybase, who is the Project Management Committee lead for the Eclipse Data Tools Platform Project. "JSR220-ORM will help insure that we meet the needs of the community by providing important tools in the area of object-relational mapping. To aid in this task, Xiao Wang, from Sybase, has joined the project as an architect."

For additional information on the Eclipse JSR220-ORM Project, please visit the project at http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-jsr220-orm/main.html .

About Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software. Eclipse provides extensible tools and frameworks that span the software development lifecycle, including support for modeling, language development environments for Java, C/C++ and others, testing and performance, business intelligence, rich client applications and embedded development. A large, vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse Platform.

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects. Full details of Eclipse and the Eclipse Foundation are available at http://www.eclipse.org/.

About Versant Corporation

Versant Corporation is an industry leader in specialized data management and open data access software. Using Versant's solutions, customers cut hardware costs, speed and simplify development, significantly reduce administration costs, and deliver products with a strong competitive edge. Versant's solutions are deployed in a wide array of industries including telecommunications, financial services, transportation, manufacturing, and defense. With over 50,000 installations, Versant has been a highly reliable partner for over 15 years for Global 2000 companies such as British Airways, US Government, Financial Times, IBM, and MCI. For more information, call 510-789-1500 or visit http://www.versant.com/.

Forward Looking Statements Involve Risks and Uncertainties

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the safe harbor created by those sections. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about Versant's involvement in the Eclipse community, its open source initiatives, and the potential outcomes of these activities. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and there are important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include, without limitation: that Versant may not achieve or maintain the leadership role of this Eclipse project; that any such position obtained may not remain intact in the future; that object-relational mapping may not be a critical missing architectural component; the possibility that there may be shift with Java programmers away from object-relational mapping; the possibility that Eclipse and open source software may lose its growing popularity in the Java community; that adoption rates for this technology may not continue into the future; the possibility of delays in release of the product; that product refinements may be necessary, including the possibilities of inherent bugs and errors; that users may not realize the anticipated results and experience unforeseen problems; along with the possibility that there may not be a dramatic expansion of Versant's visibility into the Java community and a corresponding increase in direct interaction with Java community developers. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date of this press release; the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward- looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause results to differ can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's most recent Reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

NOTE: Versant is a registered trademark or trademark of Versant Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other products are a registered trademark or trademark of their respective company in the United States and/or other countries.

CONTACT: Julie O'Grady of O'Grady Communications, LLC, +1-650-269-9989,
or julie@ogradycommunications.com; or investors, Scott Liolios of Liolios
Group, Inc., +1-949-574-3860, or scott@liolios.com

Web site: http://www.eclipse.org/

Web site: http://www.versant.com/