Re: Informix on NT platform - Impact of 100 to 400+ Users
"Reiner Kunz" <Reiner.Kunz@pr-kunz2.M.eunet.de> wrote: :Hi Nils, : :you shouldn't say this. About connecting GUI end user tools as you have quoted below? : UNIX is such a catastrophy for administering. Catastrophy is a too strong word, but it could have been made so much easier than it is. Now I have most of my experience from Altos Unix (based on Xenix but made easier to administrate), Interactive Unix (both up until 1990 or so) and now SCO Unix. Non of them where exactly easy. There are simply too many completely different files, commands, syntaxes, not to speek of device driver entries which is a jumble. Other Unixes may be simpler but there is a long way to go. Although Microsoft isn't necessarily that much better their aim at least is to make everything simple periode. They have in some (not all) areas failed in not providing any way at all to get in behind things. Unix on the other hand seem to have a far too large relianse on the back door into things. GUI, automation and helpfiles are the keys that few Unix suppliers have taken to the length necessary. : You :need at least 4-6 monts to get basic understanding of UNIX interna and :administration. You realy can't do NT at the same level in that much shorter a time. The *big* advantage is that you can start right out of the box and get something very usefull running in an hour or two. : Not to speak from installing the stuff. I'm working with a :HP9000 and my admins will need 5 (!) days and three (!) consultants and a :whole new unix machine just to get this damned thing from HP-UX 10.10 to :10.20. Full installation is required again when we'll get HP-UX 10.30. With :NT installation or upgrading is just a snap. Absolut no problems. And no 3 :consultants for a week, drinking my coffee ;-) You must have a very special installation to have to do all this. Are you sure you can compare the two. There are a lot of issues that are realy independent of the OS, and there are conceivably cases when I wouldn't be very happy upgrading NT either from one version to another without a new machine to do it on. We just upgraded an NT workstation with no database on it from 3.51 to 4.0. Even though the person who did it knew what he was doing, and had studied the issues first he still wasn't finished when I left after about 5 hours. :Also, getting ODBC up and running is also a catastrophy. I didn't find :*any* consultant capable or willing of installing I-CLI, Sequelink or :OpenLink drivers. So much for the consultants. And I *am* realy sorry to have to say this, but if you aren't even capable of getting the OpenLink Request Broker installed on your server - you or your consultant - then I doubt very much that you know what you are talking about at all. This is a major part of my reason for saying what you quoted. To get OpenLink to run is so easy noone, noone at all, can claim it's hard unless there is a major defect in a release on your machine. It isn't GUI, and it would be nice with a GUI tool to *later* maintain the .ini file, but the installation is still simplisity itself. If you should by any chance talk about the MS Windows part of the OpenLink installation you are even further afield. The other two products you mention are stupidly hard to install and I try to avoid them to the extent it is at all possible. They are eclatant examples on how things should *not* be done. But luckily you can simply leave them alone unless you need to run NewEra or ESQL/C programs on MS Windows. : They're all 4GL centric. Maybe, because 4GL didn't change :much for the last 7 years. So, they didn't have to learn something new. Throw them out. Now. : I :forgot: My consultants told just to drop this Windows Development rubbish :and to switch to Intranet solutions with Java and JDBC. Oh, my god! If they had the above described problems they have *no* right to say anything like this. Before you say something like this you have to know what you are talking about in a lot of detail. Such claims can do nothing but hurt us all in the computer industry, and particularly developers. If I came from an MS Windows only background and heard the combined claims above I would simply shrug and go somewhere else continuing my MS centric development style. Knowing a little more I can decide what's right for myself, and don't need their advice, nor do I want to listen to it. I say all this although they may be "correct" (it does depend on the total environement even with Java). Even Karl Marx uttered a few seemingly coherent sentences, but that's hardly of interest if the basis they need isn't there. :I still think, after fiddling around with all major OS brands that NT is a :serious alternative to the whole bunch of multiuser systems like UNIX. And :it's much cheaper, too. Fiddling? :cu Reiner : :Nils Myklebust <Nils.Myklebust@idg.no> schrieb im Beitrag :<33258058.15388407@gate.idg.no>... :> "Rob Culhane" <gsdrtc1@worldnet.att.net> wrote: :> :> Sometimes this is done from a motivation that GUI end user tools :> running under MS Windows (95 or NT) are easier to connect to a :> database running on Windows NT. Nothing is further from the truth. This I certanly stand by. Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org