IDS version eligibility

Hi, everybody, With the recent enormous increase of the price for IBM/Informix support, the following question arises: What maximum databases server version the customer is eligible for if he stops paying support fees? Previously, with the purchase if IDS, the customer also got a one-year support contract. That is, customer was eligible for all IDS versions released during the first year after purchase. That means, if customer purchased 9.30uc1, most probably he is eligible to upgrade to 9.30uc3. Now IBM is changing the support model to that available for DB2 customers. AFAIK if DB2 customer bought version 8.1.0.0, he is eligible to upgrade to any release level (like 8.1.5.0, that is any 8.1.x.x) withing the same base version, but not legible to upgrade to 8.2.x.x - support contract is required for that upgrade. This model is very similar to MS support model: customer with SQL Server 2000 can download any service pack for free, but is not eligible to upgrade to the next 'Yukon' (not released yet) unless he purchases an expensive support contract. Does it mean, that with DB2 support model, customer will be eligible to upgrade to any 'release level' of the current version (like from 9.30uc1 to 9.30uc7) without support contract, and support contract is only required to upgrade to 9.40? P.S. What actually happened (please, correct me, if I'm wrong) Previosly, there were 3 support levels for Informix customers: 1. Assurance (upgrades without tech support) - 5% lic/year 2. Tech support (upgrades + support) - 10% lic/year 3. 24x7 support (upgrades + support + 'special' 24x7 advanced support) - 30% lic/year Very few customers really needed extremely expencive 24x7 support; for most customers, levels (1) or (2) worked perfectly. Now we have only level 3 at somewhat cheaper price - 20% lic/year. That means, that for most customers IDS support became 2 or 4 times more expensive. ------------------------------------------ Alexey Sonkin ' sending to informix-list