Re: Informix vs. Oracle: The Support chapter
dbadmin@svilosa.bis.bg (Milen Metodiev) wrote: :Hi! : :I'm from Bulgaria. The Informix version of our product is OnLine 5.0.2. :When we purchased Informix product we purchased Informix support contract :too. But when it finnished and we asked for another contract we was :surprised when we saw it. They sent us a contract which is saying that we :will receive new versions of our Informix product for free. There was no :any point about any kind of support. So we didn't sign the contract again. : :Two weeks ago, however, when I had a meeting with the company, which :is called itself INFORMIX Autorized Technology Center, Sounds like a third party representative of Informix, not Informix themselves? : they show :me the two most expensive contracts. One - the old one. The second :one they said me is a new tipe of contract - the most expensive. :It include in itself the older contract plus developers support. :For examle, ***maybe*** we'll have a chance that they'll answer us :if we ask them any questions about Informix bugs. No immediate onsite :support at all, which is just what we need. May be they are allowed by Informix to write up their own contracts. :And there is a point in this contract which is highly unacetable for us: : "INFORMIX doesn't support any product for which the new version is : existing. Maximum period for upgrade is six months." But they do support it in the sense that you get help with any problems you may have. If you find a defect in the software they may however require that you move to a newer version to have that defect fixed. They do not supply interrim releases or patches (the letter/digit combination at the end of the version number) for older versions. They generally stop supplying these a year after general availability of a product. At that time you need a later version. :They said us that INFORMIX doesn't support version 5 at all, while they :do it, but from next year - maybe NO MORE. Informix does support version 5. The latest version is 5.08 I think. It's of course on limited maintenance which basically mean they will only fix sever problems. You can however both buy the product and get any support contract on it. They have no stated plan to stop this that I know about. :So, if we want to use the adventages of the contract we must install the :last version of our Informix product and pay defaults for the time we :didn't sign the contract. You should possibly get a later version than 5.02, but you shouldn't be in any major trouble for not going above 5.x. :We don't want to buy a new versions of Informix products, because we :are developing a big project. And we have no time to study the bugs of :the new versions. And the situation will be such, untill there will be no :guarantee that when Informix server shutdown there will be somebody who :will be able to help us and explain us what happened. Informix is able to do this. If their representative isn't I would ask Informix directly what is happening. May be they are doing a bad effort at selling you something new. :I will be thankfull to anybody who will be able to send me a copy of :the main points in the Informix support contract. Check out the Informix web site at http://www.informix.com/informix/services/ilink/plc/plc.htm You need a password to this, so you may have a problem if you have no contract. You should however be able to go to your supplier and look at it with them. It contains all the information you need about products and lifecycles. :And does Inoformix :oblige its representatives (in a little countries like our) anything? I don't know. They should. But as you say it's a small country and market, so may be they haven't followed them up closely enough. :What are the Informix prices (per cents of the products' cost) usually? I am not sure right now. Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org