Re: Oracle is KILLING INFORMIX...

billy@west.co.za (Billy Wheeler) wrote: :> Superior? :Well, yes.... :-) :> 1. If you walk through an index sorted ascending, :> it may go quite fast. But if you turn the other way round :> in a 4GL, you'll have to do a order by desc which will :> (re)create a temporary index taking several minutes with :> a few 100000 records in your table... In Oracle it won't. :If this is a regular occurrence, there is nothing stopping you from :creating a descending index or even mixing ascending and descending :within one index.... :> 2. If you have a table with 100000 rows and you just want :> to select the first 20 rows according to a specified condition :Agreed - this is a real wish list item for any developer. C'mon Informix, :at least tell us why we can't have this facility, or better yet, tell us when :it's getting released.... :-) Not very high on my list as it's so easy to do via a cursor if you are in any programming language (99.9% of our cases). But the real issue is to say Oracle is superior based on these tiny specs in the universe (of databases) is a strange opinion indeed. If the original poster of these items had looked just a little at the current performance of Informix and the new things they are now doing with the Universal Server the picture becomes so different, and the comparison is in a quite different balpark than what has been discussed here. Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company