Senior Oracle DBA now Learning Informix by Request of Company: I Thought Informix was Dead?
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From: cfoug...@gmail.com - view profile
Date: Sat, Dec 9 2006 1:57 am
Email: cfoug...@gmail.com


So I've been doing Oracle for almost 20 years now and I've been
assigned to learn Informix IDS so I can become a backup Informix DBA. I
thought when IBM acquired Informix they would kill it and move
everybody to UDB (DB2 for non-mainframe). So what is happenning to the
future of Informix?

BTW, it seems like a pretty good database. Kinda of a cross between
Sybase and Oracle.


Help me understand.


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From: elanlebl...@yahoo.com - view profile
Date: Sat, Dec 9 2006 6:57 am
Email: elanlebl...@yahoo.com


cfoug...@gmail.com wrote: I
> thought when IBM acquired Informix they would kill it and move
> everybody to UDB (DB2 for non-mainframe).


That was Janet's grand plan. She apparently failed to consider that
DB2 did not have the feature set of of IDS, did not perform as well as
IDS in OLTP environments and was far more costly to administer. The
Informix customers and business partners gave her an education before
her retirement last year.


>So what is happenning to the future of Informix?



While many IDS and DB2 customers share similar attributes and have
similar needs, IDS has a much more diverse customer base and fills
needs that DB2 (or Oracle) cannot. For that reason, IBM now has a
multi-data server strategy. While the two data servers will share
technology (and the engineering resources applicable) where it makes
sense, IDS and DB2 will focus new technology on different market
segments. IDS will target high performance OLTP and 'extreme'
environments such as the need for an very small footprint or zero
administration. DB2 will focus on XML and more general purpose
environments.


> BTW, it seems like a pretty good database.


IDS is an exceptional database. Definitely needs some investment in
SQL and a few other areas, but the architecture provides for
exceptional performance and ease of administration that is second to
none.


> Kinda of a cross between
> Sybase and Oracle.


The mention of Oracle gives me hives. But, then, the last production
upgrade I had to do of Oracle was 6 to 7.