IDS RELIABILITY QUESTIONS

It seems like everytime I visit this forum there are numerous reports of things not working the way they're supposed to in IDS. Perhaps some problems are due to incorrect design or programming, but they all can't be attributed to those reasons. I understand that IDS is a much more complex product than SE, but I would be very nervous if my enterprise apps encountered frequent or sporadic problems like some of the reports I have been viewing here.

Frank I don't think you need to worry too much. The issues reported are concerned with some of the more esoteric IDS features or where users are puching the boundaries of IDS. I've been running IDS 9 now for over 5 years on a 24/7 system and during that time have only lost two periods of down-time due to an issue in IDS and both occasions resulted from users doing something exceptional. Keith On 27 March 2010 17:19, FRANK COMPUTER <frank@frankcomputer.com> wrote: > It seems like everytime I visit this forum there are numerous reports of > things not working the way they're supposed to in IDS. Perhaps some problems > are due to incorrect design or programming, but they all can't be attributed > to those reasons. I understand that IDS is a much more complex product than > SE, but I would be very nervous if my enterprise apps encountered frequent or > sporadic problems like some of the reports I have been viewing here. > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > >

Perhaps being that IDS9 has been around longer, less complex than 10, 11, been beaten-up and shot at over time, it's more stable. Im sure you have discovered some things about 9 which have more limits than what's documented. Alpha and Beta tests cannot possibly catch every possible scenario of things which can malfunction so that's why we always have fixes/patches. I usually wait a year or two after a new version is released to see what happens to others.

We've been running on IDS 10 for 3 years with 0 issues that weren't caused due to either someone doing something they shouldn't have or a bad configuration. If there were really that many problems with IDS, instead of 20k threads on this forum, there would be 500k threads. Jonathon ________________________________________ From: ids-bounces@iiug.org [ids-bounces@iiug.org] on behalf of FRANK COMPUTER [frank@frankcomputer.com] Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 4:50 PM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: Re: IDS RELIABILITY QUESTIONS [19429] Perhaps being that IDS9 has been around longer, less complex than 10, 11, been beaten-up and shot at over time, it's more stable. Im sure you have discovered some things about 9 which have more limits than what's documented. Alpha and Beta tests cannot possibly catch every possible scenario of things which can malfunction so that's why we always have fixes/patches. I usually wait a year or two after a new version is released to see what happens to others. ******************************************************************************* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.

I disagree. This list is usually used for errors or conceptional questions, understanding new features, not for everything running smooth over years (as we have since 1992 starting with Online 4.1). Same with a hospital, you seldom find healthy, uninjured people in the ER. regards, Joerg Volz ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- -----Original Message----- From: ids-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:ids-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of FRANK COMPUTER Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 6:19 PM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: IDS RELIABILITY QUESTIONS [19426] It seems like everytime I visit this forum there are numerous reports of things not working the way they're supposed to in IDS. Perhaps some problems are due to incorrect design or programming, but they all can't be attributed to those reasons. I understand that IDS is a much more complex product than SE, but I would be very nervous if my enterprise apps encountered frequent or sporadic problems like some of the reports I have been viewing here. ************************************************************************ ******* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. IT Handel und Beratung Jorg Volz Bernhard-Fruh-Str. 7 77855 Achern GERMANY Tel: +49 (0)7841-681651 Fax: +49 (0)7841-681654 Mobil: +49 (0)170-2989757 VAT-ID: DE201383541 http://www.it-volz.de

Frank, I will say this where I work we run IDS and have since release 5, We were purhaced by another company which didn't have Informix but ran Oracle and SqlServer. Both of those groups would die to have our uptime numbers in their performance reports to show. Bruce Simms -----Original Message----- From: ids-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:ids-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of FRANK COMPUTER Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 12:19 PM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: IDS RELIABILITY QUESTIONS [19426] It seems like everytime I visit this forum there are numerous reports of things not working the way they're supposed to in IDS. Perhaps some problems are due to incorrect design or programming, but they all can't be attributed to those reasons. I understand that IDS is a much more complex product than SE, but I would be very nervous if my enterprise apps encountered frequent or sporadic problems like some of the reports I have been viewing here. ******************************************************************************* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.

My concerns and issues are not so much IDS crashing, rather the programs and procedures ABEND'ng! or taking an excesive amount of time to complete.. apps should be bullet-proof!.. especially mission-critical apps where business depends on them working properly in a timely manner! Many of the error reports I see in the IDS and Classics forums involve ABEND's of 4GL programs, SPL's or taking too long to complete!

As someone already stated, you are looking through a window into a hospital emergency room or a doctor's sick patient waiting room. Your observation is the equivalent of looking into the emergency room and determining that a significant percentage of all humans are damaged or sick at any given time. Believe me, applications running against IDS are as stable as the engine, or at least as stable as those accessing any other database system. When I was at Bloomberg IDS served up mission critical data to over 200,000 users who paid through the nose for the service. If it wasn't reliable we would have had to pay those customers millions in reliability refunds and I wouldn't have lasted 14.5 years there managing their Informix databases for many of those years and application development groups for most of the rest. Art Art S. Kagel Advanced DataTools (www.advancedatatools.com) IIUG Board of Directors (art@iiug.org) See you at the 2010 IIUG Informix Conference April 25-28, 2010 Overland Park (Kansas City), KS www.iiug.org/conf Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that my own opinions are my own opinions and do not reflect on my employer, Advanced DataTools, the IIUG, nor any other organization with which I am associated either explicitly, implicitly, or by inference. Neither do those opinions reflect those of other individuals affiliated with any entity with which I am affiliated nor those of the entities themselves. On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 6:50 PM, FRANK COMPUTER <frank@frankcomputer.com>wrote: > My concerns and issues are not so much IDS crashing, rather the programs > and > procedures ABEND'ng! or taking an excesive amount of time to complete.. > apps > should be bullet-proof!.. especially mission-critical apps where business > depends on them working properly in a timely manner! Many of the error > reports > I see in the IDS and Classics forums involve ABEND's of 4GL programs, SPL's > or > taking too long to complete! > > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > > --00151747b7848779c30482e4aeed

Again issues like this are not attributed to IDS, but to the programs written to work in it. The exact same thing would happen if the software in question had been written for oracle or mysq (in whatever their native special language is)l. The dbs isn't going to fix failures in programing. J ________________________________________ From: ids-bounces@iiug.org [ids-bounces@iiug.org] on behalf of FRANK COMPUTER [frank@frankcomputer.com] Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 6:50 PM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: Re: RE: IDS RELIABILITY QUESTIONS [19435] My concerns and issues are not so much IDS crashing, rather the programs and procedures ABEND'ng! or taking an excesive amount of time to complete.. apps should be bullet-proof!.. especially mission-critical apps where business depends on them working properly in a timely manner! Many of the error reports I see in the IDS and Classics forums involve ABEND's of 4GL programs, SPL's or taking too long to complete! ******************************************************************************* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.

If you think IDS has such problems, you might want to check with Kmart (in a thousand stores running with no DBAs with no problems) or Home Depot (thousands of stores with no DBAs) or Walmart (thousands of stores with no DBAs) or ATT managing phone systems or Cisco (embedded in their voicemail products I believe). I think they would disagree with you. Again, the applications are not written by Informix, but by the end customer or a third-party vendor. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Art Kagel" <art.kagel@gmail.com> To: ids@iiug.org Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 7:23:23 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: RE: IDS RELIABILITY QUESTIONS [19436] As someone already stated, you are looking through a window into a hospital emergency room or a doctor's sick patient waiting room. Your observation is the equivalent of looking into the emergency room and determining that a significant percentage of all humans are damaged or sick at any given time. Believe me, applications running against IDS are as stable as the engine, or at least as stable as those accessing any other database system. When I was at Bloomberg IDS served up mission critical data to over 200,000 users who paid through the nose for the service. If it wasn't reliable we would have had to pay those customers millions in reliability refunds and I wouldn't have lasted 14.5 years there managing their Informix databases for many of those years and application development groups for most of the rest. Art Art S. Kagel Advanced DataTools (www.advancedatatools.com) IIUG Board of Directors (art@iiug.org) See you at the 2010 IIUG Informix Conference April 25-28, 2010 Overland Park (Kansas City), KS www.iiug.org/conf Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that my own opinions are my own opinions and do not reflect on my employer, Advanced DataTools, the IIUG, nor any other organization with which I am associated either explicitly, implicitly, or by inference. Neither do those opinions reflect those of other individuals affiliated with any entity with which I am affiliated nor those of the entities themselves. On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 6:50 PM, FRANK COMPUTER <frank@frankcomputer.com>wrote: > My concerns and issues are not so much IDS crashing, rather the programs > and > procedures ABEND'ng! or taking an excesive amount of time to complete.. > apps > should be bullet-proof!.. especially mission-critical apps where business > depends on them working properly in a timely manner! Many of the error > reports > I see in the IDS and Classics forums involve ABEND's of 4GL programs, SPL's > or > taking too long to complete! > > >

Frank With respect then, these issues are related to poor database design, inadequete indexing or (most usually) poor programming practice and lousy developers. IDS can only undertake what is askedof it and if some idiot asks it to do something stupid then it will try its best to fulfil that request, even if it requires a database scan !! keith On 28 March 2010 23:50, FRANK COMPUTER <frank@frankcomputer.com> wrote: > My concerns and issues are not so much IDS crashing, rather the programs and > procedures ABEND'ng! or taking an excesive amount of time to complete.. apps > should be bullet-proof!.. especially mission-critical apps where business > depends on them working properly in a timely manner! Many of the error reports > I see in the IDS and Classics forums involve ABEND's of 4GL programs, SPL's or > taking too long to complete! > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > >

> -----Original Message----- > From: ids-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:ids-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of FRANK > COMPUTER > Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 12:19 PM > To: ids@iiug.org > Subject: IDS RELIABILITY QUESTIONS [19426] > It seems like everytime I visit this forum there are numerous reports of > things not working the way they're supposed to in IDS. Perhaps some problems > are due to incorrect design or programming, > but they all can't be attributed > to those reasons. I understand that IDS is a much more complex product than We've been running Informix since the early nineties. We've had *one* bug thar resulting in a service outage. > SE, but I would be very nervous if my enterprise apps encountered frequent or > sporadic problems like some of the reports I have been viewing here. This is the nature of forums - people typically only post when they have a problem. So lurking a forum does *not* give you any real insight into the stability, viability, or suitability of a product or project. Forums will always cast the forum topic negatively; it is the nature of the construct.

Quoting FRANK COMPUTER <frank@frankcomputer.com>: > My concerns and issues are not so much IDS crashing, rather the programs and > procedures ABEND'ng! or taking an excesive amount of time to complete.. apps > should be bullet-proof!.. especially mission-critical apps where business > depends on them working properly in a timely manner! Many of the > error reports > I see in the IDS and Classics forums involve ABEND's of 4GL > programs, SPL's or taking too long to complete! Nothing prevents someone from writing lousy code with an Informix backend.

OK then!.. Please don't get me wrong, I've been a big admirer of Informix products, since 3.3 on Altos Xenix (1982), and would certainly like to see it get back the stature it had in the mid-1990's when it was head-to-head with Oracle. Maybe that's why I would like so much to see a Windows GUI-based 4GL/ISQL product materialize, other than Querix, FourJ's, Gillani, etc. As for IDS stabilty, your'e all correct!.. guess it's up to the developer to provide as many exception/error-trapping routines possible + properly design and constuct their code in order to properly interact with IDS or SE. The self-regulating, dynamic engine is a big plus!