Current Informix vs. Oracle Data

I'm looking for someone who can give some good input in the Informix vs. Oracle arena. Management is all up on Oracle because "everyone knows how to use Oracle and it's popular and try to find an Informix DBA - there aren't any, but if you look up Oracle DBAs, they can be found easily." I really can't compare the two because I have never seen Oracle, never used Oracle, and haven't seen any information on recent versions of the two RDBMS's that compares the two. My thought seems to be that it's like the VHS vs. Betamax deal - Beta (informix) was a much better format, but VHS (oracle) won anyway because more people used it. I like Informix, it has never given me any problems, it does everything we need, but the new app they want to develop is something they don't want to have to look too hard to find a good DBA (or two) for and they think Oracle is the way to go. The Oracle sales nazis have brainwashed them pretty good and there's nothing I can say to sway their opinions. Now the Oracle people have offered to swap out Informix for us and replace it with Oracle. My thing is that everything they've mentioned that Oracle is so great at, Informix will do. Their thing is, where do we find people who know Informix? I would just like somewhere to look for information to hand them that will get them to consider something else. Any help/information is appreciated... -- Jon<*>

Hope you get the information you want, it would be very interesting. In the mean time, Oracle breaks, Informix doesn't. There are more Oracle DBA's than Informix DBA's due to the simple fact that it takes (based on some shops that run both) 5 times as many DBA's to keep Oracle running as it takes to manage an Informix installation. You'd almost think Oracle was a Microsoft product.

Floodgates are open.... Always been a hot topic for debate for many a DBA - Oracle or Informix ?? Not so long ago, Oracle used to ship a RDBMS that would work out of the box, but if you really wanted to get the most out of your engine then you had to buy all sorts of add-on features - parallelism, archiving options, web enablement, network functionality - all for additional costs. Informix came packaged with the entire bundle ( apart from some specialist bits and bobs ). This I think changed with Oracle8 who tried to go down the Informix path - producing 2 versions, Workgroup & Enterprise editions. What exactly are you going to use the engine for ? The Oracle Nazi's ( as you put them ) ( as well as Informix ) will find it fairly easy to brain wash executives who probably don't know what RDBMS stands for ? or how it links into the application its going to be used with. At the end of the day, the guys who make the decisions will want to make a safe choice with minimum risk ( read the contracts ) - go with the market leaders, financial stability, larger customer base. If everyone thought like this, we wouldn't have competition, and the world would be full of Bills. No one ever got fired for buying IBM ( well, 10 years ago this might have held true ). In essence, Informix & Oracle do pretty much the same job - manage the integrity and security of your data. Personally, I prefer Informix as it provides a little more flexibility form the DBA's point of view and also Informix Universal Server & XPS engines are the best OO databases on the market. Just because there is more resource out there for Oracle doesn't necessarily mean that you get a better class of resource. In my recent experience, I have known 3 Oracle DBA's who are effectively PL/SQL programmers with a little DBA knowledge. To list the differences bit by bit would be a pointless exercise if you havn't yet decided exactly what its going to be used for. Determine that, then look at the features with each engine. Considerations:- What is the engine going to be used for ? OLTP or DSS ? How many users ? What specific hardware do you need ? What do the RDBMS vendors recommend ? Will you need replication ? Will you need distributed databases or transactions ? Will you be using GUI Client to connect to the engine ? What will your archiving strategy be ? What disaster recovery do you have ? What availability do you want for your data ? ( 24x7 or 12x5 ) What support will you need from the vendor ? The Betamax & VHS analogy is very close. Oracle without doubt have a much sleaker marketing department who were very focussed on a market ( mid-range UNIX servers ) once they had conquered the Mainframe arena. Informix Information for Unix ) started life on UNIX and IMHO has better technology to work on these platforms. (Oracle8 has gone some way in narrowing the gap though). I am biased towards Informix (as you would expect), but in todays market place, its not necessarily the best that gets the deal. This should be an interesting one to watch Sean -=Eclypse=- wrote in message ... >I'm looking for someone who can give some good input in the Informix vs. >Oracle arena. Management is all up on Oracle because "everyone knows how >to use Oracle and it's popular and try to find an Informix DBA - there >aren't any, but if you look up Oracle DBAs, they can be found easily." >I really can't compare the two because I have never seen Oracle, never >used Oracle, and haven't seen any information on recent versions of the >two RDBMS's that compares the two. My thought seems to be that it's like >the VHS vs. Betamax deal - Beta (informix) was a much better format, but >VHS (oracle) won anyway because more people used it. I like Informix, it >has never given me any problems, it does everything we need, but the new >app they want to develop is something they don't want to have to look >too hard to find a good DBA (or two) for and they think Oracle is the way >to go. The Oracle sales nazis have brainwashed them pretty good and there's >nothing I can say to sway their opinions. Now the Oracle people have offered >to swap out Informix for us and replace it with Oracle. My thing is that >everything they've mentioned that Oracle is so great at, Informix will do. >Their thing is, where do we find people who know Informix? I would just >like somewhere to look for information to hand them that will get them >to consider something else. Any help/information is appreciated... > >-- > >Jon<*>

In article <B9326DEBCC81F5D9.1FC8A9E77C96ABBB.67C53DB51BAA9976@library-proxy.airnews.net >, -=Eclypse=- <eclypse@cdc.net> wrote: > I'm looking for someone who can give some good input in the Informix vs. > Oracle arena. Management is all up on Oracle because "everyone knows how > to use Oracle and it's popular and try to find an Informix DBA - there > aren't any, but if you look up Oracle DBAs, they can be found easily." > I really can't compare the two because I have never seen Oracle, never > used Oracle, and haven't seen any information on recent versions of the > two RDBMS's that compares the two. My thought seems to be that it's like > the VHS vs. Betamax deal - Beta (informix) was a much better format, but > VHS (oracle) won anyway because more people used it. I like Informix, it > has never given me any problems, it does everything we need, but the new > app they want to develop is something they don't want to have to look > too hard to find a good DBA (or two) for and they think Oracle is the way > to go. The Oracle sales nazis have brainwashed them pretty good and there's > nothing I can say to sway their opinions. Now the Oracle people have offered > to swap out Informix for us and replace it with Oracle. My thing is that > everything they've mentioned that Oracle is so great at, Informix will do. > Their thing is, where do we find people who know Informix? I would just > like somewhere to look for information to hand them that will get them > to consider something else. Any help/information is appreciated... > > -- > > Jon<*> > Our experience has shown that out of the box, Oracle does OK without much room for performance improvement. In a high traffic busy environment you can possibly hit a wall where all your left to do is throw more hardware into your system. Informix out of the box does not perform as well, particularily with text searches, but properly tuned to your specific hardware, the top side potential is much higher. If your database anticipates growth and performance will be an issue, I personally feel Informix is the best choice. You need tech savy managers willing to make the right choice. Frank Testa Columbia House -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own

Just a few comments ... Informix as a company is MUCH easier to work with. While the base license costs for the two are the same ( or very close ) Informix bundles parititioning which Oracle DOES NOT and wont give a date/release as to when they will ( my own personal soapbox item ). 3rd party tools are more prevelant to support Oracle but companies like Platinum are beginning to see the light after the troubles of the last couple of years and supplying tools to make our jobs as DBA's easier. Based on my last working with support of the products, you can expect Informix to be better - but still not as good as we would all like for what we pay. -=Eclypse=- wrote: > > I'm looking for someone who can give some good input in the Informix vs. > Oracle arena. Management is all up on Oracle because "everyone knows how > to use Oracle and it's popular and try to find an Informix DBA - there > aren't any, but if you look up Oracle DBAs, they can be found easily." > I really can't compare the two because I have never seen Oracle, never > used Oracle, and haven't seen any information on recent versions of the > two RDBMS's that compares the two. My thought seems to be that it's like > the VHS vs. Betamax deal - Beta (informix) was a much better format, but > VHS (oracle) won anyway because more people used it. I like Informix, it > has never given me any problems, it does everything we need, but the new > app they want to develop is something they don't want to have to look > too hard to find a good DBA (or two) for and they think Oracle is the way > to go. The Oracle sales nazis have brainwashed them pretty good and there's > nothing I can say to sway their opinions. Now the Oracle people have offered > to swap out Informix for us and replace it with Oracle. My thing is that > everything they've mentioned that Oracle is so great at, Informix will do. > Their thing is, where do we find people who know Informix? I would just > like somewhere to look for information to hand them that will get them > to consider something else. Any help/information is appreciated... > > -- > > Jon<*> -- Tony Johnson Email : rp2360@email.sps.mot.com Senior Database Administrator Voice : ( 602 ) 655 - 4617 Motorola SPS Information Technology Pager : ( 888 ) 772 - 5229 2200 W. Broadway Rd. MD M555 Fax : ( 602 ) 655 - 3569 Mesa, AZ 85202 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We Are One. One Team. One Voice. One Objective : To Be No. 1 With Our Customers. No RAS. DWYSYWD. LOPOYPDNNMAEOMP. Top Box. WDIRTFTWYCDIA. No Necktie Damage. Murphy's Data Constant: Data will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

-=Eclypse=- wrote: We have 17 servers running Informix and one DW server running Oracle. I am Sr. DB for all of this with my team. The only reason that Oracle is here is that we had some problems with Informix early in our shared experiences and Mgt soured on Informix so the new DW project has been started in Oracle. I have been working with RDBMSs since 1981 when I worked with Oracle, Informix, Ingres, and others. Today the most advanced RDBMS, the most powerful RDBMS, and the fastest RDBMS are all from Informix and they are the same product IDS. Need more? How about a flamingly fast OLTP engine for HUGE databases and HUGE transaction rates that can run shared nothing on a 12 server cluster with full redundant failover? Get IDS/XPO. How about an Object Relational engine that can provide OLTP performance and safety AND uses ODBMS data structures and executes custom code (DataBlades) in native engine processes? Get IDS/UDO. > I'm looking for someone who can give some good input in the Informix vs. > Oracle arena. Management is all up on Oracle because "everyone knows how > to use Oracle and it's popular and try to find an Informix DBA - there > aren't any, but if you look up Oracle DBAs, they can be found easily." They are easily found because most Oracle DBA's are not worth their salary and they move around like race horses. It takes seven courses to be certified as an Oracle DBA in one DBA sub-discipline and Oracle defines five! And the courses for each are different! An employee who knows basic relational theory and SQL can become an Informix DBA after just three courses and he WILL know what he needs to know to do his day to day job. If you want to create a Guru who can tune the engine to peak performance there are two additional courses and a system internals workshop that can help. Why are there no Informix DBAs on the market? Because we were mostly trained from within (myself at a previous job) and doing our jobs so well, and so happily that we aren't going anywhere! > I really can't compare the two because I have never seen Oracle, never > used Oracle, and haven't seen any information on recent versions of the > two RDBMS's that compares the two. My thought seems to be that it's like > the VHS vs. Betamax deal - Beta (informix) was a much better format, but > VHS (oracle) won anyway because more people used it. I like Informix, it > has never given me any problems, it does everything we need, but the new > app they want to develop is something they don't want to have to look > too hard to find a good DBA (or two) for and they think Oracle is the way > to go. The Oracle sales nazis have brainwashed them pretty good and there's > nothing I can say to sway their opinions. Now the Oracle people have offered > to swap out Informix for us and replace it with Oracle. My thing is that > everything they've mentioned that Oracle is so great at, Informix will do. > Their thing is, where do we find people who know Informix? I would just > like somewhere to look for information to hand them that will get them > to consider something else. Any help/information is appreciated... Right Oracle sells to management not tech. I NEVER see or hear from an Oracle sales person unless one of the managers brings him over to me. Try this exercise, I have: Ask any Informix DBA who has worked with Oracle also which he/she prefers, which is better, which easier to manage. Do the same with any Oracle DBA who has also worked with Informix. Surprisingly the vast majority of answers will be the same. DBAs prefer Informix if they have used it. Art S. Kagel

Oracle is much harder to run than informix, at Oracle version 8 it is still just a loose bundle of utilities. Informix is much easier to scale performance than oracle as it is already parallelized and easy to scale in the config file. Oracle I would characterize as paralized, very difficult to configure for a parallel SMP and get any performance gains. The one thing that really bothers me is there is no DBSCHEMA type utility in Oracle. I had to make a script that filters oracle exp/import utility output. You can use it to port Oracle schemas to Informix. -- --------------------------------------------------------- Steven Hauser email: hause011@tc.umn.edu URL: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hause011 Phone: (612)626-7135 Fax: (612)625-6853 ---------------------------------------------------------

-=Eclypse=- wrote: > > I'm looking for someone who can give some good input in the Informix vs. > Oracle arena. Management is all up on Oracle because "everyone knows how > to use Oracle and it's popular and try to find an Informix DBA - there > aren't any, but if you look up Oracle DBAs, they can be found easily." Hmmmm... I love to hear this, looks like my rate is going up. :-) > I really can't compare the two because I have never seen Oracle, never > used Oracle, and haven't seen any information on recent versions of the > two RDBMS's that compares the two. My thought seems to be that it's like > the VHS vs. Betamax deal - Beta (informix) was a much better format, but > VHS (oracle) won anyway because more people used it. I like Informix, it > has never given me any problems, it does everything we need, but the new > app they want to develop is something they don't want to have to look > too hard to find a good DBA (or two) for and they think Oracle is the way > to go. Oracle depends on an architecture of bandaids, baling wire, and shoe strings to stay together. The engine is at least 5 years behind Informix if not more. Actually they have several engines required to make it fly, none have been re-architected since Informix's 7.x product came out. They do not do threading, instead, it's _simulated_ threading via multiple processes. The monolithic nature of the Oracle implementation for parallel servers is also void of using "shared-nothing" architecture. One node in an Oracle cluster can crash the whole cluster. This doesn't happen on XPS. If one node goes down on XPS, the rest stay running. > The Oracle sales nazis have brainwashed them pretty good and there's > nothing I can say to sway their opinions. Now the Oracle people have offered > to swap out Informix for us and replace it with Oracle. My thing is that > everything they've mentioned that Oracle is so great at, Informix will do. Did you know that Oracle stored procs cannot return multiple rows of data, Informix can. Informix has a high-speed loader that can literally load millions of rows of data in SECONDS. I perform loads weekly that typically contain millions of rows of data, each load taking less than a minute, with average row sizes between 100 and 200 bytes. Gigs of data. Lots of fun. :-) Oracle can't do it no freakin way. How about parallel loading/unloading? Oracle? No way. My loading operation can be done by a child! :-) > Their thing is, where do we find people who know Informix? I would just > like somewhere to look for information to hand them that will get them > to consider something else. Any help/information is appreciated... > If your management will attempt to do some due diligence and actual side-by-side comparisons for responsible business risk management, they will pick Informix. Unfortunately Informix Corp sits quietly by and says nothing in their defense against Oracle. I suspect it's because there is a perception that Oracle is selling apps more than they sell data bases. Another thing Informix needs to do is sell XPS correctly. From what I've heard from insiders, the Informix sales monkeys are being told that XPS is only for HUGE monstrous data warehouses. This is a total waste of the new data warehouse market and missed opportunities to use XPS. XPS works well on small data warehousing projects on ONE server all the way up to hundreds of servers. The latest version has new features that really make it the only choice in data warehousing. But you only know this if Informix tells the story correctly. There are features about XPS we didn't even know about until after training. For example we found out we can run multiple instances of XPS on one server, and even set up multiple coservers on one single server. An amazing product. Oracle cannot do this, and wouldn't even understand what it meant. The company I work for loves Oracle but they picked Informix because they did the math. They only keep Oracle and Sybase around to make sure they don't depend on one vendor for anything. Thanks, Tim -- - -- --- Tim Schaefer ---- tschaefe@mindspring.com --- http://www.inxutil.com -- -

On 17 Feb 1999 02:58:28 GMT, -=Eclypse=- <eclypse@cdc.net> wrote: >I'm looking for someone who can give some good input in the Informix vs. >Oracle arena. Management is all up on Oracle because "everyone knows how >to use Oracle and it's popular and try to find an Informix DBA - there >aren't any, but if you look up Oracle DBAs, they can be found easily." >I really can't compare the two because I have never seen Oracle, never >used Oracle, and haven't seen any information on recent versions of the >two RDBMS's that compares the two. My thought seems to be that it's like >the VHS vs. Betamax deal - Beta (informix) was a much better format, but >VHS (oracle) won anyway because more people used it. I like Informix, it >has never given me any problems, it does everything we need, but the new >app they want to develop is something they don't want to have to look >too hard to find a good DBA (or two) for and they think Oracle is the way >to go. The Oracle sales nazis have brainwashed them pretty good and there's >nothing I can say to sway their opinions. Now the Oracle people have offered >to swap out Informix for us and replace it with Oracle. My thing is that >everything they've mentioned that Oracle is so great at, Informix will do. >Their thing is, where do we find people who know Informix? I would just >like somewhere to look for information to hand them that will get them >to consider something else. Any help/information is appreciated... Oracle is the Microsoft of the DBMS world. Inferior product, excellent marketing. Informix, OTOH, has IMHO piss-poor marketing but a technically excellent product. At the moment, I can't even get upgrades for one of my clients that has a maintenance contract with Informix. Another client wanted a crossgrade; in spite of faxed requests listing serial nos etc, nothing in 3 months despite followup faxes & emails. I've used both for the last 10 years. Given a choice, I up until recently always picked Informix, because it worked and kept working. Oracle is just barely adequate. My current project (a 100Gb database) is using Oracle for the engine, due to a management decision. I pay for this every day, esp. when I load 100 million rows of data that a nameless person used Oracle EXPORT to unload. However, technical excellence isn't everything. The best product is useless if you can't get it when you need it. Having said that, the database server is only part of the issue. What are you going to use to access it? If it's character mode apps, Informix 4GL is so far in front of Oracle that it's not funny. GUI tools from the vendors - both are IMHO inadequate compared with those from 3rd parties. Pity about the ODBC though. Final thought: there are a lot of Oracle DBA's around because Oracle sites need a lot of them to keep their engine running. Informix sites don't. Peter Wiley