Informix patches?

I'm a dba in both an Informix and Oracle shop. I have a question about patches. Four times a year (October, January, April, and July), Oracle releases what they call a Critical Patch Update, or CPU. Oracle "strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible," I believe because of security concerns. To apply the patches, you must shut the databases (instances) down, apply the patch, correct any and all errors that occur (and it seems there's always at least one, normally more), and then restart the databases. To my knowledge, Informix doesn't release such patches. Maybe I'm asking the wrong group, but my question is how does Oracle know that every four months a critical patch will be necessary? Why doesn't Informix release such patches? I don't mean to start another flame war, although they are fun to read, but this has been on my mind for some time now and I never read any mention of patches in this group. Upgrades to new versions, yes, but not of any patches, per se. Thanks for any insight! MJR in Alaska ____________________________________________________________________________________ Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! - their life, your story. Play Sims Stories at Yahoo! Games. http://sims.yahoo.com/