SAN MATEO, CALIF. – March 29, 2004 – Elsevier, a leading, multiple-media publisher of scientific, technical and health information products and services, has selected Mark Logic Content Interaction Server as the platform for its family of online medical information sites serving the clinical content and diagnostic needs of physicians and other healthcare professionals.

"Elsevier is one of the world's leading publishers, and we are excited that they have selected our technology to support their online publishing efforts," said Paul Pedersen, founder and CEO of Mark Logic. "This partnership is an example of how world-class publishers such as Elsevier are leveraging Mark Logic leading-edge technology to enhance and evolve products and services to improve our customers' online experience."

"Elsevier wants to help customers solve the real problems they face in their particular setting," said David Marques, Elsevier's Chief Technology Officer. "Medical reference books are invaluable resources for making a diagnosis, but laboriously searching and cross-referencing a number of different books is an inefficient way to do this. The products we're building with Mark Logic Content Interaction Server allow physicians to quickly pull out only the most relevant pieces of information from across a range of different reference books, in order to reach an informed diagnosis."

Elsevier's Content Challenge:

Elsevier needed a technology that could overcome four primary challenges:

First, they did not have a centralized repository. Each body of content existed in a separate database; some were in a leading relational database format, others were in proprietary formats. There were only a few applications on each database.

Second, normalizing content was extremely time-consuming. For one application project alone, there were 35 different document formats involved.

Third, new functionality was expensive to build. The complex logic needed to take apart a document and analyze relationships between documents (e.g., citations of one document by another) had to be built application-by-application. Moreover, from a performance perspective, forcing this logic into an application was inefficient, compared to building the logic directly into a database which optimizing its capabilities to efficiently retrieve large amounts of information.

Fourth, Elsevier had massive amounts of content. They estimated that the final content repository would exceed 1 terabyte in size. This includes more than five million full-text journal articles across a variety of journals; more than 60 million citations and abstracts (separate from the articles); thousands of books; as well as a few thousand informational pamphlets.

Reasons Elsevier Chose Mark Logic:

Elsevier selected Mark Logic's comprehensive content database platform because it allowed them to consolidate all of their content archives, rapidly build a variety of new online applications, and enhance existing content applications with new, value-added functionality.

High-Performance XQuery Implementation

Mark Logic Content Interaction Server incorporates a full implementation of XQuery, and the only one that delivers high performance against multi-terabyte datasets without the rigidity of fixed schemas.

Rapid Application Prototyping and Development

By building a set of rich, value-added services into the repository, the application development task becomes easier and faster. Rather than having to build on a basic set of search and retrieval primitives, a "smart" repository which can deliver summaries, highlighting, link analysis, and other key services allows developers to support the activities in line with Elsevier's strategic objectives.

"The majority of our time and resources on a project are consumed by deciding exactly how the content will be used and laboriously preparing it for the database," added Marques. "Using Mark Logic we've cut that time in half."

Element Level Granularity

Content Interaction Server reaches inside content to extract sub-document level elements, e.g. chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences. This means Elsevier can create new content by summarizing information across different bodies of content, grouping information across content categories, and building in other types of analysis.

Extreme Flexibility

Content Interaction Server accepts content "as is" from many sources, enabling Elsevier to virtually eliminate the lengthy process of preparing content. Rather then having to plan ahead for every contingency or possible use of the content Elsevier can reply upon the flexibility of the technology to evolve and change applications over time.

In fact, Elsevier plans to standardize on the Mark Logic platform: "Content Interaction Server will be a core of all our major electronic products going forward." Marques stated. "Right now we are migrating older applications to Mark Logic Content Interaction Server and are developing new, richer applications as well."

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. Working in partnership with the global science and health communities, Elsevier's 6,800 employees in 86 offices worldwide publish more than 1,800 journals and 2,200 new books per year, in addition to offering a suite of innovative electronic products, such as ScienceDirect , MD Consult , Scopus , bibliographic databases, online reference works and subject specific portals.

Elsevier is a global company headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high-quality and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of delivery. Reed Elsevier's ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

About Mark Logic Corporation

Mark Logic has developed the first enterprise-class database specifically designed for disparately structured content, effectively unlocking the vast majority of enterprise information that is not easily stored in relational databases. Mark Logic Content Interaction Server was built from the ground up to enable enterprises to analyze, synthesize and enhance business content that, until now, has remained locked inside Microsoft Word documents, PDF files, E-mail, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint and HTML, SGML and XML documents.

Content Interaction Server provides the platform for a new class of content-centric applications that extract value from existing content in order to create new products and services, streamline business processes and enhance existing revenue streams. Mark Logic has garnered a prestigious client list that includes Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Elsevier and the U.S. Department of Defense. The Company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. For more information, visit www.marklogic.com or call +1-650-655-2300.

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