Re: NFS mounted database

It's a serious misunderstanding somwhere here which have poped up several times before. Informix OnLine is a database server. That means it's a program that run on some machine and manages data on that machines disks. To access the database you have to communicate with this program. It than reads the data from disk and return it to you or write data you send to it to disk. There is no other way to access the data than through this program running on the server where the disks are. We call this program the Informix engine. This engine can also communicate with other engines on other machines so they can read and write data on the disks on those machines on the behalf of the first engine and send/receive this data to/from your program. From the point of view of your programs (esql/c or whatever) that reads and writes data to the database it isn't interesting at all where the data is located. It's the engine, the server program, you communicate with. The net effect: NFS, NFS mounting or any other type of access to the disk is uninteresting, unhelpfull and to no avail for accessing the database when it's an OnLine engine. (It doesn't work very well, if at all with the SE engine either as far as I know.) You communicate with the engine via some transport protocol. If your program runs on a different machine than the Informix Engine this protocol is most often TCP/IP. On top of this you need the I-Net program on your client machine (where your program runs). With OnLine 5.x you need I-Star (or possibly also I-Net can be used - I no longer remember) on the server machine. Both are extra cost options. On OnLine 7.x you need no extra program on the server side, only I-Net on the client. When you do this your applications should run well on multiple SGI Indy's. A PS: Think if you put the database on a cooked file, NFS-mounted the directory, and stared another instance of OnLine on another machine pointing it to the same cooked file - what a caos. Appart from the fact that you would need another lisence of OnLine even to do this, I think Informix support would not help you untangle the caos in your data if you even got the other instance to start up. > Carol Lafond <cvl0> writes: > I've read the FAQ on NFS mounted databases, but have additional questions. > We have online 5.05 and esql/c running on a Sun workstation running Solaris2.4. > This is our server environment. We want to run our application, developed and > compiled with online5.05 and esql/c, on multiple SGI Indy's. > Question 1: Can we simply NFS mount the database and run the application > without purchasing any client software for the above configuration? > Question 2: If we upgrade to 7.xx, do we need additional software on the > clients to access the database through NFS mount? > Question 3: Can you NFS mount a raw database space or only cooked files? Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM Data AS, Postbox 9090, Gronland, 0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company