Some DB Questions that I DESPERATELY need to know.

Dear Informix Group: I have been subscribing to the list for some time, but, I have some questions (which may be a bit "newbie") but I am hoping for some answers. Please send responses directly to me unless you feel compelled to provide "group englightenment" by forwarding it to the listserv. 1. Solaris 2.3 / Informix 5.0 I have an Sun Sparc Server 1000 with dual CPUS and 4 GBs of disk on 2 disks (1 controller). The RAM is 250MB and the CPUs are the fastest we can get. What are some kernel parameters (/etc/system) and shared mem parameters (tbconfig) that you have found work well in terms of performance. (I'm not looking for trade secrets, just stories of success.) *Note, presently, an application (expert based) which makes calls to the Informix On-line engine v.5.01 writes and reads a horrifically slow 5 records per second. Ugh! An unhappy user / customer found their Pentium worked faster! (Oh no!) Presently, aside from the number of Informix users defined in tbconfig, we are using "out of the box, stock" default settings for the Solaris 2.3 kernel and Informix tbconfig. 2. Whats the best way to create indicies on heavily read / written tables? We have three tables in the system that get "hammered" continuously. They are often joined, queried, sorted, inserted to, and selected from. It is not possible to put the data into a common table without serious code change and it is not practical to create other tables for the same reason. So, instead, I want to attempt to create an index to help the optimizer. After reading the Informix press books of "DBA survial.." and "Informix tuning..." I believe the best way is by creating an index for these three heavy hit tables. However: 1. How will the optimizer respond to such an index (no theory here, please just practical experience) 2. Can I tell the optimizer by a call like "UPDATE STATISTICS" to look at these tables in some way to increase efficiency. 3. I know that UPDATE STATISTICS helps when it is run two or three times a day but I believe that this process may not be thorough for concurrency's sake because of locks on certain tables, rows, etc. Is there a way to run UPDATE STATISTICS in a more utilitiarian mode so that I can be sure the db is at its "optimum?" 3. We have an HP box using Informix 6.0 as a client to our Informix Server On-Line (Sun OS 4.1.3) (this is an entirely different machine from the Solaris box.) Is it posssible to use the Informix Net application to communicate between different On-line versions of client / server and different UNIX operating systems. (I haven't had time to test and the customer does not want to take the chance of having the net fail.) Any and ALL responses are appreciated. Again, please send to mws1@osi.com unless you want to post to the group. MANY, MANY THANKS! Matt Silveira System Engineer OSI matt@osi.com "Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer." Thought for the week: Manual, n. A unit of documentation. There are always three copies at any given time. One is on the shelf, some one has the others, the information you need is in the others. -Ray Simard