Re: Informix running on Linux

Tim Schaefer <tschaefe@mindspring.com> wrote: :> was written by me. ...snip... :I was hoping someone would comment on SCO. I have no recent experience :with it, but did work with it a couple of years ago. I am very curious :as to other experiences with it, in light of Linux. According to a comparison with MS Windows NT and some other alternatives a 100 user version of SCO cost between 2 and 3 times as much as NT. Smaller number of users are also rather expensive, and they require quite a lot from the hardware (100 MHz+ Pentium, 32 MB++ RAM, 400MB disk for the OS alone). This hardware alone is normally not any problem for a new instalations, although smaller requirements counts in Linux's favor. It's another issue if you are currently running on anything from Xenix and up to SCO 3.2.4.2. A lot of customers are realatively happy with performance. They do however want some new functionality that often seem minor to them, but require an OS upgrade (if for no other reason than to accomodate a later Informix product). The simultaneous upgrad of the OS, Informix product and a new PC becomes quite a lot of money for many. With a Linux port most, if not all, of them could simply install Linux, buy the upgrade from Informix and keep runing. Informix would earn some money, the customer and the third party developer would be happy. The alternative would very often be for Informix to not get any sales at all. Either the customer or the third party developer or both are rapidly looking for other more viable alternatives. If there are 500.000 SE installations (I have heard higher numbers from Informix some years ago) only 10% of these upgrading at say US$500 to Informix would be US$ 25.000.000. I see this as only a small part of the Linux market. SCO are pricing themselves out of this part of the market. They have a significant problem of course in that their development and distribution model is very costly. They are however now codeveloping with HP what is going to be both the next HP and SCO Unix. If they and HP where half smart they would sell it at a very low price. I don't realy expect any of them to be that smart though. They would have to earn money on volume, and they currently aren't realy set up to do that. Not in the face of the competition from Linux. SCO are trying to go up market, doing clustering, fail over, 64 bit version and other things. They are leaving the low end market behind. That may be right for them (there is an interesting market in competing with the overpriced big iron Unix guys), but it isn't right for the small customers. Informix have had some of the same problem lately. They however can so easily get back to basics in their low end market without any destruction at all to other parts of their bussiness. A Linux port would be a major factor to achieve this. : However, the points :to Linux over the other x86 Unixes are: : :1. Low cost - it's free Well, nothing is free - not even Linux, but it's cheap at least. :2. High value - more products for it than any other UNIX :3. Better scalability - it runs on virtually ANY PC. Portability you mean. As I hear it the one point where SCO may be able to compete right now is in multi processor setups. This may (probably is) changing. :These all add up to a total cost of ownership for Linux that is a dream :come true for many businesses world-wide--especially in developing :countries and/or in towns and cities where many businesses can't ever :afford systems like SCO or Solaris. This is as widespread and large a market in the US as anywhere else. It may be more obvious a market in places like eastern Europe where a larger percentage of the market may be in this category - but one shouldn't forget that the total size of the market is probably larger in the rich countries. : Even if the OS were cheap, other :software for it is through the roof in cost. Well, much of the free "Linux" software also run on SCO - but still. :You may recall a few years back SCO was bundling Ingres with one of the :first System V releases when they were breaking away from Xenix. It :flopped because nobody cared about Ingres. Interesting that Informix :has ultimately bought Ingres in Dr. Stonebreaker. Well, I still think that Informix buying Illustra was a very smart move. If they hadn't had it their long term prospects would have been worse - much worse. Now their long term prospects are very good indeed, particularly if they also regain their previous understanding of the low end market. ...snip... :Linux on PC --> make mo money --> upgrade to Linux on Digital Alpha, :retain investment in software, and OS. I think you have overestimated the Alpha machines. I doubt very much that the performance will be much different except on the largest Alphas. The Intel Pentium processors are becoming fast, and the disk technology is essentially the same. (Check the TPC/C results, they also show this - for what they are worth.) ...snip (port SE - simple db)... :7.x Online does present some problems. However, if the largest base of :users were on Linux, tool makers would probably invest in developing :cool front end products that folks could use. I'm very impressed with :Tcl, and who knows, if I were a tool maker, I'd see a platform that :would be worth investing tool development in for the LONG TERM. I :wouldn't :have that big question mark over my head like I do for NT, or other x86 :UNIXes. I'm so glad I didn't but Unixware... where is that one now? I agree on the tools bussiness. Much of it will probably even be portable to other Unixs. You are however wrong on Unixware. SCO bought that from Novell, and it's the basis for the new SCO version called Gemini, and as I understand it also for the new 64 bit HP/SCO Unix. It's the "original" SCO Unix - Open Server - that is releagated to the slagheap. This is natural of course as it's such an old kernel (based on AT&T Unix ver. 3.2) that SCO have tried to fix some, but never managed to get up to real modern standards. This however doesn't matter much. See below - Linux is it's own market to a large extent. :BTW, HP has made a big committment to MS, so this is a scary thought as :well. : :> With SE you copy the Informix software to the machine and brand it. :> Copy the application programs and database to the machine, set a small :> number of environement variables and start running the application. :> Nothing more to start it. :> Then you set up a cron script that does Unix *and* database backup :> nightly and run an "update statistics" script and bcheck/secheck. On :> any restart of the machine you make sure bcheck/secheck is allways :> executed. :> Our users run's for years with this setup with essentially no :> management at all - nothing except changing the backup tapes and :> checking the backup logs on their printer. :> :> Many don't even run logged databases. Can you imagin? - They don't :> need it. - Nightly backups are fine for many applications. :> : :I know many OnLine DSA shops like this. :-) They're out there. May be it's just me feeling better with an SE installation at remot