Ingres Corp’s shares have been sliding since DEC walked away from a deal that would have given it a 25% stake in the company, signalling unease over the company’s direction and uncertainty in wake of the ending of the DEC talks: from $8.875 on April 27, the shares had drifted to $6.375 at the end of last week; sales were up 39% for the third quarter, representing a substantial increase in business over the first half of the year that ended last month, but the company, which had reported losses for the first half of fiscal 1990, only just crawled back into the black with $212,000.