IDS - latest version or not?
A poster asked whether to jump straight to the newest IDS (11) when upgrading a customer from an old 2GB-dbspace-limited version (7.31) on Solaris 8/SPARC, or pick something more conservative. Replies were advisory rather than a fix: weigh whether the new features and licensing terms are needed, note IDS 11's longer support life versus IDS 10, and remember no release is bug-free though v11 had closed and open betas with fixes shared across versions. The poster leaned toward the latest version, given a binary-compatible test box for thorough testing; no definitive outcome is recorded.
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The customer is running an old version of IDS, restricted to 2GB dbspaces. We are going to upgrade once the current development work is live, my inclination is to go to the latest version. The box is running Solaris 8 and has SPARC processors (it's not actually a Sun), is there any reason *not* to go for the latest version?
"Cats" <ramwater@uk2.net> wrote in message news:1189934417.507724.121590@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com... > The customer is running an old version of IDS, restricted to 2GB > dbspaces. We are going to upgrade once the current development work > is live, my inclination is to go to the latest version. The box is > running Solaris 8 and has SPARC processors (it's not actually a Sun), > is there any reason *not* to go for the latest version? Well ... The Answer of (my) Self-Interest would be "Yes". The reason is that I want to start using IDS 11 in production, but would want to seee a lot of evidence, case studies etc that other people are already doing so and that any early bugs have been rooted out. So, please go ahead and let us know how you get on! If I were you, what would I be asking?: - do I need any of the (many) new features of IDS 11? - can I take advantage of any of the more generous licensing features of IDS 11? Assuming not: - when might I think to upgrade next? Currently IDS 10 has no "end of support" date set but it will end support well before IDS 11. If you are very infrequent upgrader then the longer "shelf life" of IDS 11 may be a factor in its favour. I gues that it ultimately comes down to the level of your risk-adverseness. What is your customer's application? If it's Air Traffic Control you might be more cautious than if it's a kitchen inventory system ...
That reminds me, I need to get out that latest release of the kitchen inventory system - KIS for short. j. -----Original Message----- From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list-bounces@iiug.org]On Behalf Of Neil Truby Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 9:46 AM To: informix-list@iiug.org Subject: Re: IDS - latest version or not? "Cats" <ramwater@uk2.net> wrote in message news:1189934417.507724.121590@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com... > The customer is running an old version of IDS, restricted to 2GB > dbspaces. We are going to upgrade once the current development work > is live, my inclination is to go to the latest version. The box is > running Solaris 8 and has SPARC processors (it's not actually a Sun), > is there any reason *not* to go for the latest version? Well ... The Answer of (my) Self-Interest would be "Yes". The reason is that I want to start using IDS 11 in production, but would want to seee a lot of evidence, case studies etc that other people are already doing so and that any early bugs have been rooted out. So, please go ahead and let us know how you get on! If I were you, what would I be asking?: - do I need any of the (many) new features of IDS 11? - can I take advantage of any of the more generous licensing features of IDS 11? Assuming not: - when might I think to upgrade next? Currently IDS 10 has no "end of support" date set but it will end support well before IDS 11. If you are very infrequent upgrader then the longer "shelf life" of IDS 11 may be a factor in its favour. I gues that it ultimately comes down to the level of your risk-adverseness. What is your customer's application? If it's Air Traffic Control you might be more cautious than if it's a kitchen inventory system ... _______________________________________________ Informix-list mailing list Informix-list@iiug.org http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list
Cats wrote: > The customer is running an old version of IDS, restricted to 2GB > dbspaces. We are going to upgrade once the current development work > is live, my inclination is to go to the latest version. The box is > running Solaris 8 and has SPARC processors (it's not actually a Sun), > is there any reason *not* to go for the latest version? > Up to know , there were no reports here of problems with IDS 11. Of course, not many people are using it in big systems by now... What can we say... Every problem discovered in IDS is checked against all supported versions. This means that IDS 11.10 UC1 has a lot of bug fixes included in latest IDS 10 (assuming they affected v11 also). There aren't bug free versions... If you're still developing and you have a good testing environment I'd choose IDS 11... Given the quantity and quality of features. It's possible you hit bugs, but that is also true for any other version you choose. Besides, IDS 11 went through not only the usual closed beta but also an open beta. Probably the new features are the ones that can have more bugs... An higher level of caution when choosing to use some of them may be wise. But the number of features is so great that I'd choose it. Unfortunately in my daily customer I can't because they're on Tru64... (a dying species) and by now there is no IDS 11 for that platform. So they're moving to v10... Regards -- Fernando Nunes Portugal http://informix-technology.blogspot.com My email works... but I don't check it frequently...
On Sep 16, 2:46 pm, "Neil Truby" <neil.tr...@ardenta.com> wrote: > "Cats" <ramwa...@uk2.net> wrote in message > > news:1189934417.507724.121590@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com... > > > The customer is running an old version of IDS, restricted to 2GB > > dbspaces. We are going to upgrade once the current development work > > is live, my inclination is to go to the latest version. The box is > > running Solaris 8 and has SPARC processors (it's not actually a Sun), > > is there any reason *not* to go for the latest version? > > Well ... > > The Answer of (my) Self-Interest would be "Yes". The reason is that I want > to start using IDS 11 in production, but would want to seee a lot of > evidence, case studies etc that other people are already doing so and that > any early bugs have been rooted out. So, please go ahead and let us know > how you get on! > > If I were you, what would I be asking?: > - do I need any of the (many) new features of IDS 11? > - can I take advantage of any of the more generous licensing features of IDS > 11? > > Assuming not: > > - when might I think to upgrade next? Currently IDS 10 has no "end of > support" date set but it will end support well before IDS 11. If you are > very infrequent upgrader then the longer "shelf life" of IDS 11 may be a > factor in its favour. Well - they are still using V7.31 so 'infrequent upgrader' seems appropriate! > I gues that it ultimately comes down to the level of your risk-adverseness. > What is your customer's application? If it's Air Traffic Control you might > be more cautious than if it's a kitchen inventory system ... Not ATC, but slightly more important than a kitchen inventory system. However given we have a stand-alone binary compatible test box (e.g. in the past I used cpio to copy the INFORMIXDIR from live to this test box and it worked though I changing the service names & ports so clients could connect to either), the latest seems the way to go so long as they give it a good test.