Red Brick Systems Inc, the recently high-flying supplier of specialized relational database management systems for data warehouses and data marts, has turned in a surprisingly poor first quarter, reporting an operating loss of $6.7m as opposed to a net profit of $0.2m for the same period in 1996, on turnover a nudge up from the same three month period last year, to $6.52m from $6.51m. Acknowledging the disappointing results, chairman, president and chief executive officer Chris Erickson said that the company is taking aggressive and immediate measures to address the slip. Judging from the balance sheet, one negative factor is that basically not enough dogs are eating the Red Brick dog food: software license sales have slipped from $5.3m in the first three months of 1996 to $3.6m this last quarter, with increases in maintenance and service (up from $1.2m to $2.9m) making up the shortfall so that quarter on quarter revenue seems about the same. The company has also radically upped its spend on sales and marketing, apparently to not enough effect, from $3.5m to $7.3m. For its first year as a public company, in its year end results for fiscal 1996 reported in January, Red Brick recorded total revenues of $36.0m, an increase of 75% from $20.6 million in the previous year, with net income of $3.8m.