Re: DBMS Selection for 500+GB data and 500

>Hear, Hear, Lets see some more quotes from that article: (And grab those >gartner group reports, they are the best thing for Oracle or haven't >you read one lately?) Agreed, Tom. Let's see some more quotes from that article. And grab your thinking cap: quoting out of context is a dangerous thing! >SUBJECT: INFORMIX FIGHTS ALSO-RAN IMAGE >SOURCE: Computerworld via First! by Individual, Inc. >DATE: March 18, 1995 >INDEX: [1] Comment: The title of the article was intended to demonstrate, through the body of the article, that Informix had had some problems and was working hard to overcome them. Informix corporation has increased its profits from $47.8M in 1992 to $90.6M in 1995 (estimated by Robertson, Stephens & Co., San Francisco). Total sales have skyrocketed from $283.6M in 1992 to $649.8M in 1995 (est). Profit would have been greater, but Informix is spending a sizeable chunk of cash on R&D efforts annually. As it makes more money, it spends more on R&D. >"Few observers said they expect Informix to overtake Sybase's No. 2 market >share slot or knock Oracle Corp. out of its leading position." The author (Kim S. Nash) adds in the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH: "Yet Informix has carved inroads at several key user sites, including the $2 billion mining company Freeport McMoran, Inc. and the $9 billion Home Depot retailer." Did you not want to quote *that* particular paragraph, Tom? >"To compete with the heavyweights, Informix spent the past four years >bulking up its OnLine database and tools. And 1995 is the year that effort >will either pay off or peter out,..." > >Comment-- I don't think people would want to go with someone who will >'pay off' or 'peter out'. Hate to be around if they 'peter out' after >making the decision to go with them.... This is true of any company - it will either succeed or it will fail. But here the original author is quoting opinions offered by "15 users and analysts interviewed by Computerworld." Whose opinion? Quoted for what reason? Based on what facts? Opinion-quoting is a way of getting one's own hidden agenda across while seeming to have facts at hand - and opinions are *not* facts. So let's skip the opinions and look at one hard fact as a sample. HP and Informix have teamed up as industry partners - and I don't think for one second that HP believes Informix is about to 'peter out'. HP produces one of the best Unix hardware platforms on the market, it is a long-term market player, and it doesn't waste its time with 'also rans' or marginal players. I have personally seen the performance results of Informix OnLine 7.1 on HP's T500 platform. (Let's not forget that, regardless of opinions, Informix's 3,118.2 tpmC (with a price/performance rating of $984/tmpC) is the highest ever achieved (as of Dec 94) on a symmetric multiprocessing server (SMP)). But regardless of all that, facts are facts, and when I see them, I see them. Unlike Mr. Kyte, I'm not an employee of Informix Software and I have no plans to become one. If I espouse a software product, it's because I genuinely think it is a good product that can meet customers' needs. OnLine 7.1 is *good*. Oracle's equivalent product may also be good, but Oracle Corporation is not going to sell me on the merits of its products by misrepresentation and bad-mouthing its competitors' products. If Oracle has a good product, Mr. Kyte, let it stand on its own merits. The original post was, like your response, a carefully planned post of half-truths and misquotes. It was and is intended to misinform corporate customers who can't afford Oracle Corp's overpriced products which might not even fit their needs. >"Informix has consistently chosen to build new technology fresh, rather >than redesign older products in baby steps that would not disrupt existing customers, ... where is the rest of the quoted paragraph? Here's what was left out: "For example, Informix opted in 1992 to build an object-oriented client/server development tool from scratch rather than tack new features onto its existing fourth-generation language." Comment: there's no point into trying to turn an old character-based development system into a GUI. They're just too different. Better to make a new one from scratch. This was absolutely the right approach. >... Today, the vendor faces an installed base of 4GL users with no >convenient migration path to the 8-month-old New Era tool." ... and, again, the remainder of the story: "Unrepentant, Chief Executive Officer Phil White stands by his ground-zero-up approach. 'There's no shortcut to good development,' White said in an interview last week. 'You have to be careful about doing interim things that don't lead you anywhere after you get them built.'" > >Comment-- Thats not a very nice thing to do.... > ... Comment: it's better than trying to make something do that which it was NEVER originally designed to do. > "However, relatively weak third-party support has discouraged some >potential customers..." Again, what was left out? Let's look at the PREVIOUS paragraph to this out-of-context quotation. "Meanwhile, New Era has turned heads at American Express Co., Clorox Co., McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc., and other large user sites that had previously bypassed Informix." ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Comment: Looks like Phil is on the right track. > "Most independent software vendors that make report writers, manufacturing >applications, systems management utilities and the like port their packages >to Oracle first, then Sybase, Finkelstein said. Informix is a distant third, >and some suppliers never bother with an Informix port at all." > "Informix has been an afterthought for top applications software companies, >White acknowledged." > ... > >Comment-- Its pretty easy to take one quote out of an article and use >it to make a point, however the article in general is not something >your Informix Sales rep will handing out if you read the *whole* thing. What's sauce for the goose ... Let's read what was left out again. "... White acknowledged. 'But we're staring to win them over,' he said ... To win corporate hearts, White has taken to calling on potential customers in person to convey exactly what his firm can do for them." What else does the article say that Mr. Kyte left out? "But OnLine 7.1, which shipped last year, is regarded as perhaps the best parallel processing database out there, according to Gartner Group, Inc., and other consulting firms. Oracle addresses parallelism differently than Informix; Sybase has promised strong parallel features for its forthcoming System 11 database, which is due to start beta testing this year." "'Informix had the better architecture by far,' said Howard Fischer, senior project manager for database services at Sears Merchandise Group in Hoffman Estates, Ill. ... Looking for a corporate downsizing standard, Sears pitted Informix OnLine against Oracle in mid-1994. Sears was impressed with OnLine, but a few personal visits from