Washington, July 27, 2009–The Association for Retail Technology Standards, the standards division of the National Retail Federation, announced today that it is adopting Embarcadero Technologies’ award-winning suite of database software tools, including its ER/Studio Enterprise data modeling tool, DBArtisan database administration tool, and Change Manager database change management tool. ARTS will use the tools to build industry-standard data models and XML schemas for the retail industry and to maintain its existing library of 17 schemas associated with its operational and warehouse models. 

“Through our agreement with Embarcadero, we will now have the optimum tools to develop new data models and XML standards as well as enhance what we already have in place,” said Richard Mader, executive director of ARTS. “We’ve heard loud and clear from our volunteer committee that they could benefit from tools that allow for multiple concurrent users and that generate formats which are compatible with other modeling tools. Now we’re able to answer that call.”

“We’ve invested significant time and effort into building a rich collaborative environment to support the worldwide base of ARTS members who contribute to the development of retail technology standards,” said Kirstin H. Wright, Chief Visionary Officer for Retail Anywhere and chair of the ARTS Data Model Committee. “The Embarcadero toolset will support this effort by enabling us to effectively harness our richest resource, our members, and make efficient use of their valuable time to build ARTS standards bigger, better and faster.”

“ARTS delivers a great service to its members by offering them valuable data model templates and XML structures that give them a head-start on their retail systems projects,” said Jason Tiret, director of modeling and design solutions, Embarcadero Technologies. “Our tools will help ARTS continue to advance their standards efforts and, with features like the Repository included with ER/Studio, its global committee members can better collaborate on the ARTS Retail Data Model.”

The ARTS Retail Data Model, currently in version 6.0, is in use around the world, supporting a full range of computer applications to operate retail businesses across multiple segments such as Shell International Petroleum Company, McDonalds, Nike and many others.

ARTS expects to fully convert its data models to ER/Studio by the end of July. All future versions of the Data Model beyond 6.0 will be developed in ER/Studio, but will also be available to members using other tools.  

The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) is an international membership organization dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards. Since 1993, ARTS has been delivering application standards exclusively to the retail industry. ARTS has four standards: The Standard Relational Data Model, UnifiedPOS, IXRetail and the Standard Requests for Proposal. Membership is open to all members of the international technology community- retailers from all industry segments, application developers and hardware companies. www.nrf-arts.org.

Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of award-winning tools for application developers and database professionals so they can design systems right, build them faster and run them better, regardless of their platform or programming language. Ninety of the Fortune 100 and an active community of more than three million users worldwide rely on Embarcadero products to increase productivity, reduce costs, simplify change management and compliance and accelerate innovation. Founded in 1993, Embarcadero is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices located around the world. Embarcadero is online at www.embarcadero.com.