Informix/Sparc/Solaris vs MS SQL Server/Intel/NT40

Hello everybody! We have a database on MS SQL Server with about 7,000,000 records in it, running on NT 4.0 dual pentium 166 128Meg. We don't need too many user licenses because most of the stuff is done through CGI. We have 30 on the SQL server. The database is pretty simple - three main tables in a one-to-many chain, the biggest, as I said with 7M records. We run a lot of complicated SQL on it involving sometimes large result sets, all statistical, simple "data mining" if you will. The database size is estimated to grow exponentially in the future, by the end of the year we'll probably have over 20M records. We are not particularly happy with the performance, and my boss is ready to shell out some major bucks to buy a dual pentium Compaq with 512Meg of RAM. (Around $30K) I have a feeling that switching to Informix on a SPARC would be a much better scalable, stable and not necessarily a lot more expensive alternative. My boss sais "Yeah but how much is it going to cost really?". We are on the East Coast if that makes any difference... I would appreciate a discussion based around the following questions: (I must warn Linux fans eager to comment - sorry, Linux is out of the question here because there is no Informix or Sybase Linux. Postgres or msql will not do.) 1. What kind of a SPARC would yield performance equivalent to a dual P166 (or 200) with 512 Meg. I know that a sparc 10 is technically an equivalent to a P75, but I know NT 4.0 is next to useless on a P75. 2. Are SPARCS really all that much more expensive than Intel machines when you're talking high-end, assuming I don't care about a 22' monitor and amazing graphics (*I* do, my boss doesn't care if I do)? How much cheaper than Sun SPARCS are SPARC clones? 2.1 I heard a lot of people mention 100Mb ethernet in SPARC/Intel flame wars - what's the deal there? Is it a lot of money on sparcs? 2.2 Would anyone care to give a real quote comparing equally powerful 2xP166 512M and an equivalent SPARC or a clone? (let's say 2x 9Gig of disk space, mirrored, two disk controllers) 2.3 Don't SPARCs retain their value a lot longer than Intel machines? 3. Isn't NT 4.0 a lot more expensive than Solaris if I look at the number of licenses? If I understand it correctly, there are *no* "user licenses" on Solaris? Currently, we need 1 NT and 1 SQL Server user license for every user, if I understand Microsoft correctly. 4. If I were to buy Informix with Netscape's SuiteSpot (1 user license), how much am I looking to pay for another 29 Informix user licenses? 5. With respect to comparing Informix to SQL Server, I know everyone sais it's way faster - is there a URL somewhere I could use to see this info? 6. MS SQL Server is a bitch to manage, the MS Enterprise Manager has a lot of very apparent bugs, and I end up using iSQL for everything I do for the most part anyway. How managable is informix, and are there hidden costs there somewhere? 8. Why is it that sometimes a simple "SELECT * FROM MYTABLE ORDER BY MYTABLESPRIMARYKEY" would take a long time to run on SQL Server, like it reindexes the database even though it's the primary index, are there stupid problems like this on Informix? 9. May be I'm missing something - is Informix/SPARC a good choice to begin with? Oracle I know is prohibitively expensive, and Sybase, which I imagine is a lot like SQL Server doesn't appeal to me too much. As far as the platform - it seems sparcs are the best deal in the unix world, I don't know about SGI (I'd aprreciate some comments), Digital UNIX is expensive and I don't care about NT on an Alpha (it's still NT). Informix also comes with bundled with Netscape which we will buy anyway. Thank You so much - please e-mail me as well as post, some postings never get to my server. Gregory Trubetskoy