Informix Online DB on CD jukebox

To all Informix experts: I am trying to build and configure one or more databases on a CD jukebox (Rewritable). I am currently using the following configurations: My computer is a Sparc 10, my CD Jukebox is a Spanserver JM52XT and my database engine is Informix Online 4.1. Here are my questions (or problems): 1) I am attempting to build a dbspace on each side of each platter, the purpose is to allow me to build a single database on each dbspace. The problem that I am encountering right now is that, I have to have a different Instance of Online for each surface of each platter in order to allow me to accomplish what I need to do. My CD jukebox has 4 read heads, so I could only mount 4 platters at a time. When I configure my dbspace, I can only allocate a platter that is currently mounted to be my chunk and if my assumption is correct, I would have to have 288 Instances of Online ( My jukebox can hold up to 144 platters)!! I think this is rather crazy!! Am I doing something wrong?? 2) My other problem is that when I allocate one surface of a platter to be a cooked device (I could not find a way to allocate it as a raw device), it took Informix a good 7 hours to allocate that dbspace and again I think that I must be doing something wrong here, it cannot be taking so long, can it??? 3) If my assumption from No. 1 is correct, that is, I would need to have over 200 Instances of Online, then I would have to do quite a bit from inside my 4GL applications in order to access a particular database. I would have to mount a surface of a particular platter, "tbinit" that particular instance, access the database and when the access is done, I would have to take that particular instance off-line and unmount that particular platter and this cycle will go on and on for any particular database that I need to access. If that is the case, is there any written C or 4GL libraries or functions that will allow the root and informix permissions to be set and reset inside a 4GL applications?? Sounds a bit crazy, I think so too!! Well, it is Monday morning and my mind is definitely not working at all!! Any help or comment will be most appreciated. Thanks in advance!!! ---- Regards, Francis Chue Unix System Project Leader American TriTech Internet: fsc0@isg.com 10717 Sorrento Valley Road Voice : (619)453-7000 ext. 283 San Diego, CA 92121 Fax : (619)453-8709