Comparative between DB2, Informix and Oracle
Hi, My company uses Informix as corporative database. As experienced DBA of the company, I have that to make a study comparing Oracle, Informix and DB2 databases and suggesting new alternatives. I have 10 years of experience with Oracle, 2-3 year with DB2 UDB and few experience with Informix (there are anothers DBAs that manage Informix here). Anyone have any kind of comparative ? Or personal opinions that whom good experience with DBs. My objective is not to generate flame wars !!! An argument very used by the development team is the facility use of Informix 4GL, mainly with batch programs. Which are the alternatives to the 4GL for Oracle? Thanks, Marcelo Wotfe DBA Senior S'o Paulo - SP - Brazil
FireHawkBr' wrote: > > My objective is not to generate flame wars !!! > An argument very used by the development team is the facility use of > Informix 4GL, mainly with batch programs. Which are the alternatives > to the 4GL for Oracle? If you need to port a large amount of 4GL code away from Informix engines, have a close look at Genero by FourJ's at www.4js.com. It's a very solid performer, and the "ODI" (Open Database Interface) layer built into it does a very decent job of mapping Informix idiosyncracies into the special dialects of the Oracle, DB2, MS Sql engines. You will still need to do a little bit of rewriting in some areas of your SQL, and perhaps some column changes, but overall it's a very effective solution. Genero is well supported and it's always been a solid performer since we've been using 4JS product for about 5 years now. If you go the Genero path, you won't end up with a failed project unless you have an insanely short deadline and complete buffoons managing and doing the programming. Remember, there will need to be a bit of rewriting, but it pales into insignificance compared to rewriting in a completely different language. If you choose to stick with an Informix engine, then going from RDS to Genero should in principle be just a matter of recompiling. Then you will be able to adapt to other database engines, and you will also be able to convert the character-based 4GL to GUI with a little bit of work; mainly to exploit the sexy new features that makes the GUI more pleasant.