Re: Informix Licensing

Greg Wake (greg@gsesco.DIALix.oz.au) wrote: : Currently the computer is a '486DX/50MHz running SCO Unix. I am always : one for keeping up to date with the latest technology and aquired quotes : for a Pentium 90Mhz computer system. : BUT.....Changing the informix licenses from a '486 to a Pentium computer : worked out to cost nearly $30,000 (AUS). This combined with the cost : of replacing the machine has put the possiblity of a medium company : moving forward technologically, far out of reach. : The Informix dealer who we purchased the products from could not even : tell us if their was a binary change involved or not. I can only : assume that their isn't. : Can someone please tell me if this sort of cost is something that we : have to live with??? We here at Cadre run SE, ESQL-C, SQL and C-ISAM on a Sun 4/470. (We also use 4GL RDS, but that doesn't play into this discussion.) We aquired a 4/490 from a division that was consolidated with another, and inquired as to what it would cost to move our licenses to the 490 from the 470. Now, the big difference between the two machines is the SIZE OF THE CABINET. The machines have the same Sparc processor, and all peripherals are interchangable. There may be a few more context switches on the 490, but our Sun tech told me that the two machines are pretty much the same. Informix, however, classifies the 470 as a "Class E" machine and the 490 as a "Class F". Informix wanted $37,150 (you read that right!) to move the software from one system to the other. $37K!!! We declined, of course, and simply moved the peripherals on the 490 we wanted to the 470. As proof of the binary compatibility, though, I loaded the binaries from the 470 onto the 490 (gasp!) and ran some tests; there's no difference, folks. Performance was the same. It really bugs me that Informix tries to squeeze big bucks out of things like this. I could see if there was some sort of code optimised for the 490, but there can't possibly be! This is the kind of crap that had us looking around for other solutions. If we hadn't been locked into Informix by a third party package we run, we would have dropped Informix like a hot potato. This is the type of thing that really soured me on Informix's business practices. I like the tools, but this gouging really sucks. -- ========================================================================== Joe Hartley - jh@cadre.com - Cadre Technologies, Inc. Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - Frank Zappa ... and in sports, Shoemaker-Levy 9, Jupiter 10.