Re: 5.0 and MultiProcessors

With regard to Informix using Multi-Processors on Ver 5.x: Nope! If you have a "four way" CPU box it doesn't work the way your example describes! In fact, because 5.x is single threaded it does not respond well to multi-CPU systems and threaded O/Ses as would 7.x. Quote from "Informix OnLine Performance Tuning" by Elizabeth Suto: "In version 5.0 of OnLine, most of the work for one user is done within one process, the sqlturbo process.... Even though the sqlturbo process can migrate from once processor to another on a multiprocessor system, it is only running on one processor at a time. This means that the UPDATE statement for one user does not take advantage of multiple hardware processors. In fact, an UPDATE statement running by itself on a machine *will not run faster* one a multiprocessor machine than it will on a single processor machine." (Hope that didn't get me in trouble with Informix for copyright, etc. ;-) ) With regard to your question. Check with tbstat, sar, vmstat, iostat, (or SunOS, pstat -T) along with dmesg and/or other system specific utilties to find out how your system is doing. A rule of thumb, get as much possible memory as you can afford, then, buy a VERY fast CPU instead of multi-CPUs. You can get v.5 to really "rock and roll" but it takes tuning, and discipline to read the manuals (sorry, I can't say RTFM) but look to the Administrator's Guide that comes with the stuff, and then to Joe Lumbley's book, and finally, the book I quoted from in this note. Send me more questions if you like, or post to the group. Yours, Matt Silveira System Engineer Objective Systems Integrators