FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 9, 2003

BLUE WORLD SHIPS LASSO PROFESSIONAL 7--SAVE $50 THRU END OF 2003

Delivers embedded MySQL, image manipulation, data caching, security
enhancements, Unicode and over 220 new features. Special pricing
available through the end of this year.

Bellevue, WA--December 9, 2003--Blue World Communications,
Inc.--pioneers of the Web Data Engine(tm)--today released Lasso
Professional 7, a significant upgrade to its award-winning Web
application server for building and serving data-driven Web sites.
Lasso Professional 7 delivers support for various industry standards
while maintaining the ease-of-use and robust security that have won
Lasso the support of thousands of Web developers worldwide.

"Lasso developers appreciate the ease with which they can build and
serve powerful data-driven Web solutions using Lasso," said Bill
Doerrfeld, CEO of Blue World. "Lasso Professional 7 continues the
Lasso legacy via significant advancements in features, flexibility,
stability and security while maintaining maximum ease-of-use and
backward compatibility."

Rave Reviews from Users

"Blue World has done it again! I haven't been this excited about
Lasso since version 5. The new image manipulation features alone are
worth the upgrade price!" - Aeon McNulty, Director, Linear Blue.

"I am extremely excited about the advancements with the authorization
and administration tags in Lasso Professional 7. The new
authorization tags not only allow me to do in one line what took
about ten previously, but give extra security features within the
same tag. I had written several custom tags that I will no longer
need with the new administration tags. The new tags even allow me to
do more than my custom tags did. I will be able to allow managers
greater control over their groups without giving them access to Lasso
Administration, thus ensuring security while offering additional
capability." - Shelane Enos, Web Applications Developer, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.

"Lasso Professional 7 is a great addition to our services, providing
the next generation of Blue World's Web Data Engine that has served
our clients extremely well for over six years. With enhanced
caching, an embedded MySQL 4 database engine, and support for new
features and standards, Lasso once again makes great strides forward
in performance and technical capability." - John May, President,
Point In Space.

Lasso Professional 7 New Features

Lasso Professional 7 (LP7) provides all of the features expected in
an advanced Web application server, including the following new
features:

Over 220 New Tags - LP7 includes over 220 new tags making this the
most feature-rich upgrade to the Lasso product line ever.

Embedded MySQL 4 Database Server - Includes a full commercial license
of the latest MySQL database server embedded into the Lasso
application. The embedded Lasso MySQL database server provides
numerous advantages to the Lasso MySQL database provided in Lasso
Professional 6 (LP6), including greater performance, support for
transactions, tighter security, and easier installation and
maintenance.

Image Manipulation - Get information about images, resize images on
the fly, create thumbnails, create watermarked images, and convert
images from one format to another automatically.

Data Caching - Performance when communicating with databases is
dramatically enhanced through easy-to-use caching tags. Allows data
served from databases such as FileMaker Pro to be served at speeds
rivaling MySQL databases.

Internationalization and Localization - LP7 is Unicode compliant,
supporting hundreds of languages and character sets. Numbers, dates,
and currencies can now be represented in localized formats.

Multi-Server Support - Lasso Professional 7 servers can now share
session data, allowing server administrators to set up multiple LP7
servers in a variety of load balancing, fail-over and clustering
configurations.

Lasso Security Enhancements - Lasso developers can now
programmatically create users and groups, assign permissions to
groups, and check what permission are assigned via new Lasso Security
LDML tags. This allows solutions to automatically interface with
Lasso Security without the need to use Lasso Administration.

Enhanced FileMaker Pro Performance - The -ReturnField tag can now be
used to improve the performance of queries to FileMaker Pro databases
when returning large found sets.

Enhanced File Manipulation - Simplifies file manipulation with files
now treated as objects. Provides enhanced performance for repeated
access to the same file.

Enhanced Network Communication - Simplifies network communication
with network elements now treated as objects. Provides TCP and UDP
support, listeners, and persistent connections. SSL support allows
secure communications.

Apache 2 Web Server Support - Supports Apache 2 on Mac OS X and Windows.

Enhanced and Simplified PDF Tags - PDFs are now editable making it
easy to add dynamic content to existing PDF-based templates. PDF tags
have been simplified and made more consistent.

Enhanced Database Communication - Programmatically control data
source connections via enhanced inline functionality. Manipulate
database results as an array of returned records.

Transaction Support - SQL transactions are now supported via nested
[Inline] tags. Ensures accurate submission of data via Commit and
Rollback routines.

Enhanced Performance - New byte-code compiler, algorithms and
architecture provide improved performance.

SOAP/WSDL/XML Support - Facilitates communication with Web services
via XML-based standards for data exchange. Supports SOAP calls so
Lasso can serve as a Web services host. New XML implementation
provides dramatic performance increase for both large and small
documents while operating within a smaller memory footprint.

Recursion Protection - Rogue code which includes recursive routines
can affect the stability of most any Web application server. LP7
introduces the ability to limit processing of recursive routines.
Administrators may set recursion thresholds for [Include] and
[Library] tags to control the depth to which recursion may occur.
Routines exceeding said thresholds fail gracefully.

Format File Execution Limits - To protect against infinite loops
caused by coding errors and lengthy or stalled requests to databases,
LP7 provides the ability to set format file execution timeouts at
both the server level (e.g. global limit) as well as within
individual solutions. This is accomplished via new settings within
Lasso Administration in addition to the new
[Lasso_ExecutionTimeLimit] tag. This does not affect processing of
asynchronous tags.

LassoApp Maintenance - Lists open LassoApps within Lasso
Administration for easier maintenance.

Lasso Administration Enhancements - Streamlined and enhanced
interface focuses on administration tasks. The three main sections
include Setup, Utility and Support.

Database Browser LassoApp - Dedicated LassoApp provided for visually
building MySQL databases and instantly browsing databases without any
programming required.

Remote Installation Support - Facilitates remote installation via the
command line on Mac OS X.

LCAPI - New LCAPI calls support Unicode strings providing enhanced
performance and internationalization support.

Macintosh Support - Supports both Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and Mac OS X
10.2 Jaguar. Compiled using GCC 3.3 with optimized support for the
PowerPC G5 processor in addition to providing support for existing
G3/G4 processors.

Backward Compatibility - LP6 solutions utilizing preferred syntax
will run in LP7 without modification. The Mac OS X installer
instantly upgrades LP6 servers to LP7 with prior settings intact.

Enhanced Installer - Enhanced installer now automatically configures
more Web servers on Mac OS X (e.g. Apache 2, Apache 1.3 and WebSTAR
V) and no longer requires IIS to be running on Windows.

Enhanced Error Reporting - More descriptive error reports provide
information about included files in addition to parameters associated
with tags and pages. Multiple parsing errors are reported at once.

Open Source - Much of the built-in functionality of LP7 is available
to developers for modification using either C, Java or LDML. New open
source components include Lasso Connector for Apache 2 and all of the
provided LDML-based custom tags (e.g. caching, validation, security,
and link tags).

Platform, Database and Web Server Support

Lasso Professional 7 supports Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.2 running Apache
1.3, Apache 2 or WebSTAR V. LP7 also supports Windows Server 2003,
Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 running Internet Information
Services versions 5 or 6.

Availability and Pricing

Lasso Professional 7 is immediately available for purchase at the
Blue World Store at <http://store.blueworld.com>. From now through
the end of 2003, customers may save $50 by purchasing LP7 at the
following discounted prices. New licenses are available at $949.
Registered customers who own a license of Lasso Professional 6, Lasso
Professional 5 Standard Edition or Lasso Web Data Engine 3.x may
upgrade to Lasso Professional 7 for $349, $449 and $549 respectively.
Customers who purchased a new or upgrade license of Lasso
Professional 6 between September 9, 2003 and December 9, 2003 can
order a free upgrade to Lasso Professional 7 via the Blue World
Store. To qualify for said discounts, all orders must be received by
11:59 PM December 31st, 2003. The special pricing will not be
extended beyond this time period. LPA members and educational
customers receive additional discounts on top of this special
promotional discount. Please see the terms and conditions posted on
the Blue World Store for details.

Free Demo

A free, fully-functional 30-day evaluation version of LP7 is
available on the Blue World Web site complete with all product
documentation.

About Blue World

Blue World Communications delivers cross-platform software tools
allowing creative Web professionals to quickly build and serve
powerful data-driven Web sites. Blue World provides Lasso
Professional, Lasso Studio and the Blue World ListSearch service in
fulfillment of its mission to deliver the best tools for building and
serving data-driven Web sites.

###

(c) Blue World Communications, Inc. Lasso, Lasso Studio, Lasso
Professional, Web Data Engine, ListSearch, Blue World Store, bring
business to the Internet, and Blue World Communications are
trademarks of Blue World Communications, Inc. Other company names,
brand names and product names may be trademarks of their respective
holders.
--


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Bill Doerrfeld bill@blueworld.com
Blue World Communications, Inc. http://www.blueworld.com/
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Build and serve powerful data-driven Web sites
with Lasso Studio and Lasso Professional.

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