Re: Informix
chavankoya189@hotmail.com (Chavan Koya) wrote in message news:<ef72e276.0404160816.7d81a3d8@posting.google.com>... > About Informix --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix > > Regards, > Chavan Koya Thanks for the link, Chavan, fascinating stuff. It does miss quite a few salient points though: - Roger Sippl founded his company while recovering from Hodgkins Disease. - 1997 was not the first time that the company had gone through a "revenue restatement" controversy, with encumbent headcount carnage. - The year that Oracle gained the most ground over Informix was 1987. In 1986 their Unix revenues were neck-and-neck at $67m. In 1987 Informix grew their Unix revenue to just $68m, while Oracle shot past the $200m mark. I don't believe Informix ever regained Unix market share after that. - Roger Sippl once stated that in the early days the company that scared them most was not Oracle but Unify. - Perhaps Informix's greatest product albatross was NewEra, a disastrous 4gl/ Java hybrid which, had it worked properly, would have brought their tools strategy into the 1990s. Touted as a simple 4gl replacement, I never did manage to find an Informix consultant who could show me what it put in place of an INPUT statement. - Greatest name-dropping story potential lay in Wingz. The story goes that Microsoft was so blown away by Wingz' Windows port that it actually borrowed from Wingz for its groundbreaking Windows 3.0 release. In fact the rumour went that MS had to delay releasing 3.0 while it crammed more Wingz-based features in. Sadly Informix's dream of fully integrating Hyperscript into its "From the Database to the Desktop" strategy never really came about - perhaps in part because the two technologies used the command "SELECT" in such profoundly different ways. - Some places were still using Smartware II a couple of years ago (perhaps they still are). - Whatever happened to FileIt! ? Andy
Andy Kent wrote: > chavankoya189@hotmail.com (Chavan Koya) wrote in message news:<ef72e276.0404160816.7d81a3d8@posting.google.com>... > >>About Informix --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix >> >>Regards, >>Chavan Koya > > > Thanks for the link, Chavan, fascinating stuff. So, go and fix it - that's what a Wiki is about. You can go and improve it. And anybody else who wants to do so can also help. > It does miss quite a few salient points though: > > - Roger Sippl founded his company while recovering from Hodgkins > Disease. > > - 1997 was not the first time that the company had gone through a > "revenue restatement" controversy, with encumbent headcount carnage. > > - The year that Oracle gained the most ground over Informix was 1987. > In 1986 their Unix revenues were neck-and-neck at $67m. In 1987 > Informix grew their Unix revenue to just $68m, while Oracle shot past > the $200m mark. I don't believe Informix ever regained Unix market > share after that. > > - Roger Sippl once stated that in the early days the company that > scared them most was not Oracle but Unify. > > - Perhaps Informix's greatest product albatross was NewEra, a > disastrous 4gl/ Java hybrid which, had it worked properly, would have > brought their tools strategy into the 1990s. Touted as a simple 4gl > replacement, I never did manage to find an Informix consultant who > could show me what it put in place of an INPUT statement. > > - Greatest name-dropping story potential lay in Wingz. The story goes > that Microsoft was so blown away by Wingz' Windows port that it > actually borrowed from Wingz for its groundbreaking Windows 3.0 > release. In fact the rumour went that MS had to delay releasing 3.0 > while it crammed more Wingz-based features in. Sadly Informix's dream > of fully integrating Hyperscript into its "From the Database to the > Desktop" strategy never really came about - perhaps in part because > the two technologies used the command "SELECT" in such profoundly > different ways. > > - Some places were still using Smartware II a couple of years ago > (perhaps they still are). > > - Whatever happened to FileIt! ? File-It! (complete with exclamation point) was a 'single-table' variant on Informix or Informix SQL. It wasn't mentioned there, but it probably wasn't the most important product Informix had. -- Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h> Email: jleffler@earthlink.net, jleffler@us.ibm.com Guardian of DBD::Informix v2003.04 -- http://dbi.perl.org/