Hands-free Administration

I have been trying to follow the resurgence of Informix IDS and the new cheetah product line. In the "Chat with the Labs" presentations and the IBM Web site a great deal is referenced about the ease of management. I believe, I read or heard something about installing IDS and never have to worry about it, it just runs. I don't think any database company would come out and say their product requires more DBA's than anyone else. So, is it the complexity of the environment that the RDBMS is in or is it the RDBMS product that actually makes the product hands-free administration? Any specifics on what makes IDS hands-free would be useful. Thanks, Chris

Chris Youll wrote: > I have been trying to follow the resurgence of Informix IDS and the new > cheetah product line. In the "Chat with the Labs" presentations and the > IBM Web site a great deal is referenced about the ease of management. I > believe, I read or heard something about installing IDS and never have to > worry about it, it just runs. I don't think any database company would > come out and say their product requires more DBA's than anyone else. So, > is it the complexity of the environment that the RDBMS is in or is it the > RDBMS product that actually makes the product hands-free administration? > > Any specifics on what makes IDS hands-free would be useful. > Hi Chris, Once an IDS instance is tuned to one's operating environment it is not unusual to be able to just 'let it run'. Clearly changes in the business environment that the server is supporting will occasionally require the engine to be retuned or for a table to be reorganized, periodic large operations like deleting large blocks of historical records may cause one to want to rebuild an index for efficiency immediately rather than let the page scanners reorganize it over time. So, the real operator guiding how hands free any IDS instance is will be the dynamism of the environment that it has to support, but that will effect any database server one would use. The difference for IDS is that at any level of required support, the amount of effort and time required of the DBAs or other administrators is normally far less than for other competing products. There are literally hundreds of Informix instances out there that haven't been touched by human hands for years at a time. There are shops that have run for years without even knowing they have an Informix database server. Art S. Kagel Oninit > Thanks, > Chris > =========================================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.oninit.com/home/disclaimer.php ===========================================================================================