Re: informix upward compatibility (fwd)
In article <1992Aug11.163009.4870@dlss2> james@dlss2 (James Cummings) writes: >|> >|> Does anyone have any knowledge of the upgradability of the 1.10 code? >|> I'd like to avoid re-compiling everything if at all possible.... > > One potential problem you may have is the level of the operating >system that your client has. When we were trying to find a fix for a >bug (which incidently Informix was aware of), we were told that the fix >should be fixed in the next higher release of Informix SQL from our current >release. When we got down to inquiring about the upgrade we find that >the upgrade would not be guaranteed unless our OS was the OS that the >upgrade was ported to. We have a 3b2/700 that is currently on SysV r 3.2.1 >the Informix upgrade was ported to SysV r 3.2.3 (hmmmm...). "What's the >*real* difference?", we asked...Informix just will not stand by the upgrade >unless we were on the right release was the only reply. Additionally, there >should be another higher release of SQL, but it was ported for SysV r 4.0! Ummm, no. To my knowledge, SVR4 doesn't EXIST for the WECO-based 3B2s (e.g. all 3B2s other than the 3B2/1000R3 models, which are Mips-based). If it does exist, we've certainly never ported to it. >Informix wanted to know why we didn't just upgrade to rel 4 of SysV and get >their latest/greatest. Folks, on a 3b2 that a major HARDWARE & SOFTWARE >upgrade costing large denomination dollar bills. I suppose what is >troubling to me about this is, that Informix addresses their "known" bugs >in upgrades ported to the current release of the OS. That's well and good >if "everyone" is going to "always" upgrade the OS. But not to support >their product except in this way seems to abandon the end user to and >upgrade everything or die existence. Do you have any idea how the support matrix explodes if you try to support the last several revs of the O/S (and I'm not talking about *different versions* of the O/S, e.g. SVR4, I'm talking just maint upgrades, e.g. 3.2 to 3.2.1 to 3.2.2 to 3.2.3 to 3.2.4)? > Ok....flames off now...in practice, it's conceivable that upgrading >your clients 4GL may cost them more than just the 4GL package...tread >carefully and ask a LOT of questions about what's guaranteed by Informix. We do nothing to break operation on old releases; to my knowledge, 4GL ported using 3.2.3 will run fine on 3.2.1. However, any changes in the O/S that *do* break backward compatibility are simply not under our control; therefore, we can't *guarantee* compatibility on combinations which we have not certified. -- Alan Denney aland@informix.com {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland "In the cafeteria just after lunch, (well, not *just* after, more like *during* lunch, about 12:28; say 12:30, give or take a few minutes), I leaned back in my chair (it was one of those aluminum chairs, good strength-to-weight, like titanium but not quite; but then of course titanium would be a bit of an overkill). Anyway, I heard one of the girls talking about how boring she thought engineers could be."