Re: Difference between Workgroup server and Dynamic server

On Mon, 31 Aug 1998 14:17:17 -0400, "Art S. Kagel" <kagel@bloomberg.net> wrote: >Noel Griffin wrote: >> >> IDS (formerly DSA) and OWGS are virtually identical. On systems with four >> processors or less there is NO performance difference!!! The differences >> are as follows: >> >> 1. OWGS is limited to 4 CPU servers (who cares, tell me how many system you >> known with >4 servers). > >Actually I have 16 DG/Aviion servers running IDS 7.24 with 32 M88100 >CPUs and 2 Sun E6000 running IDS 7.30 with 30 UltraSparc 330 CPUs. I >certainly hope EVERYONE else who uses multiple CPUs chimes in to give >Noel a view of the real world. Noel I have to support 100,000 users >and databases that exceed 150GB and are still growing. You just cannot >do that with 4 CPUs, sorry. > >Art S. Kagel I haven't used more than 1 CPU so far, but I'll still chime in and do anything I can to tell him that more than 4 CPUs is realy important for a lot of Informix customers right now. In another year or two such machines will probably become so cheap that a lot more users will find them invaluable as their database needs grow. However it's also extremely important that Informix keeps making a lower priced medium size server available. Noel also wrote: > >IDS (formerly DSA) and OWGS Now IDS/WGE (Work Group Edition) > are virtually identical. On systems with four >processors or less there is NO performance difference!!! The differences >are as follows: > >1. OWGS is limited to 4 CPU servers (who cares, tell me how many system you >known with >4 servers). I care, see above. >2. OWGS does not come with the 'onmonitor' command, instead it is >administered by a windows client admin tool. Good Informix DBA's us the >'on' utilities which are common to both, so the lack on 'onmonitor' is >irrelivant. False. Good DBAs do everything they can in as simple and fast way as possible. Sometimes that's via forms based programs like onmonitor. This is particularly true if you have well tuned and set up systems so you need to do the kind of things onmonitor is created for quite seldom. Remembering command names and options becomes foolish then. Some things you do often are also much better suited to forms based usage. >3. OWGS does not support Server Replication (rarely needed except is mission >critical apps). If you don't run mission critical applications I am not so sure you need IDS at all. Replication is usefull for other than a backup copy of your database on another machine. One example may be replication from a branch office (say a store) to the head office for any number of purposes. It's claimed to be available in 7.3 IDS/WGE though. >4. OWGS does not support table partitioning accross drives (fragmentation). >This feature is redundant except for very large databases. All versions of >online allow you to create a dbspace with chunks on many drives anyway. Almost a requirement to simplify reorganisation of a database. (See many posts lately on how it's done.) Alternative is export/import (or unload/load) which is complex and time consuming. With low cost drives it is however also usefull for an increasing number of applications. Another disk and possibly CPU to take advantage of it doesn't cost much. >5. OWGS has limited PDQ (Parrallel Data Query). But this feature is not >configured on most informix sites, as their applications are transaction >intensive, usually using primary/foriegn keys to access rows in queries. >PDQ is only activated for wide Decision Support Queries that will scan >entire tables, or very large portions of tables. DSS type databases of smaller sizes is growing significantly in number. Not only are large organizations setting up data marts, but smaller organizations are rapidly seeing the advantage of DSS databases. >6. OWGS can not have the UNIVERSAL server option added. This is due to a >licensing policy, and is not because of any technical limitation. UNIVERSAL >server option is required if you need any of Informix's OO datablade >options, such as the built in text retrieval, or spatial analysis. Most >traditional Client/Server apps which are OLTP do not require datablades. This is most unfortunate, and something I hope they will change. Most OLTP applications can take significant advantage of many of the Universal Data Option features. Even datablades would be usefull in many cases, but there are a pletora of other functionality we sure would want. We just can't afford the price right now. >7. OWGS has exactly the same kernel as IDS. >8. OWGS costs '240 per user >9. IDS costs '1100 per user >10. IDS is more scaleable if you need it. I.e. more that a 4 CPU SMP >Server, need PDQ for huge DSS queries and hardware platforms with many hard >disk drives (>6), or you need to upgrade to the IDS/Universal Server for >object relational technology with built in datablade technology. > >For most typical servers (i.e. 6 SCSI hard disks, 2-4 CPU's), with between >10 and 100 users, both products can be considered identical. OWGS has been >used successfully with databases upto 20gb. The database size itself doesn't realy matter. It's how it is used that does. I have only been critical to your evaluations of the features lacking here. Not your factual description of what they are. I think it's key to Informix that they have a medium sized server at a lower price than the full IDS. The feature difference is fine and the current IDS/WGE is fine for us and a very large number of other users. However we mustn't forget that there is a large and growing number of users that realy need the full featured IDS server. Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)