April 7, 2006

AllFusion Gen Customer:

The release of Visual Studio 2005 by Microsoft in November of 2005 and the subsequent withdrawal of Visual Studio 2003 .Net means that customers migrating from earlier releases of Advantage Gen will not be able to migrate to AllFusion Gen r7 or AllFusion Gen r7.5 unless they already have acquired sufficient copies of Visual Studio 2003 .Net or have the appropriate number of MSDN licenses. The Visual Studio 2005 announcement occurred while AllFusion Gen r7.5 was in the final phase of its release cycle and could not feasibly be incorporated in the release.

Customers who have already moved from Advantage Gen r6.5 to AllFusion Gen r7 or AllFusion Gen r7.5 should have Visual Studio.Net 2003 and may ignore this notice.

The AllFusion Gen r7 and AllFusion Gen r7.5 runtimes were compiled using Visual Studio 2003 .Net. Generated applications would need to be compiled with Visual Studio 2005 and our tests have shown some anomalies with this combination The anomalies do not appear to be a defect in Visual Studio but rather are a side effect of changes made to the compiler and associated MFC runtimes.

Customers who plan to move from Advantage Gen 6.5 or earlier and who cannot acquire Visual Studio .Net 2003 should plan to migrate to AllFusion Gen r7.6 and Visual Studio 2005. AllFusion Gen r7.6 will be available early in 2007.

Customers who have Advantage Gen 6.5 or earlier releases and plan to move to AllFusion Gen r7 or AllFusion Gen r7.5 will need to a cquire Visual Studio .Net 2003. For customers with a MSDN subscription or those who acquire a MSDN subscription there is no issue.

¹ Or the next version of Visual Studio if release timing allows.

In addition to the adoption of Visual Studio 2005 for AllFusion Gen r7.6, additional changes are planned to the technical requirements including, but not limited to:

• SQL Server 2005
• .NET Framework 2.0
• Windows Server 2003 R2
• WebLogic 9.1

It is our sincere hope that this information will assist you in planning your upgrade activities so that they may be as efficient as possible.

AllFusion Gen Product Team