Re: Advice on upgrade SE (v.2.1 to 7.x !!) on SCO

nabson@derwent.co.uk (Nick Abson) wrote: :We are intending to upgrade an old Informix database (version 2.1?) :and supporting 4GL (1.1) applications to current versions of the :software; so that we can get support, and also to enable us to use :some modern reporting tools to access the data. NB this is not my :idea, so please do not shout at me. :Has anyone ever tried this? I have been using these versions, but updated a long long time ago. :I've read the FAQ and monitored your group for a while, but obviously :the information on this kind of leap in versions is thin on the :ground. I'd be very grateful if you could you correct/clarify/add to :the following: :Seems that the problems with upgrading to version 7.x are: :* Performance : (Online only?), should I be looking at upgrading my :SCO box? With no DBA skills the best bet is probably still SE. When OnLine Workgroup Server have been out for some time on SCO that may be better. For now on SCO for your case: SE. :* rowids - some of our programs use rowid references for updates. The :other posts I've read seem to suggest that this is only an issue if :you use some of the clever features of the Online server. Is this :true, or should I start to worry about it (we've no intention of :going to Online - no DBA skills available etc). Don't worry right now for the upgrade. SE still have rowid's and OnLine as well as long as you don't fragment the tables. When you have a lot of time and resources you might want to look into these programs and change them. Rowid was never a good idea. :* Buggy versions of Informix for SCO 3.2? I also hear that Informix :are no longer developing for this version of SCO. Should I care ? :advise pls. SE works great on SCO 3.2.4.2 (If you have something prior to this you should probably upgrade.) OnLine 7.x on 3.2.4.2 has some problems that you might run into although we still use it for mission critical applications. It is true the Informix doesn't do any new ports or anything else new for SCO 3.2.4.2, but SE at least works well enough that you shouldn't need to care. On the other hand you won't get support from SCO much longer. For that reason you should realy upgrade to 5.0.2 :More general advice gratefully received! Particualrly of the kind: :'don't bother upgrading to 7.x go to 4.0, it works with Business :Objects; doesn't kill your server; costs about $100; is completely :backwards compatible with all previous versions and will be supported :for the next 4yrs - giving you plenty of time to resign'. Or maybe :not. ;-) No. Do upgrade to 7.x (SE or optionally OnLine). That's where you get support. Also other products like ODBC drivers, report generators and so on work best here. Everybody put most effort into the newest products! :Notes on current system: :--------------------------------------- :The application is a sales order processing system developed in :INFORMIX-4GL using the RDS - all code is compiled as pcode. The :database is INFORMIX-SE. The app is not particualarly sophisticated :(create/update/delete/enquiry forms and reports). :Runs on a single processor Pentium PC (SCO 3.2), 64 Megs of RAM. 8/10 :concurrent users - the performance is tolerable. The performance should become better with SE 7.x With this configuration you can also run OnLine with no problem, and should se even better performance. Some may say that OnLine 5.x runs faster on this kind of machine (single processor, simple disk controller - probably only one). We use OnLine 7.1 and are very happy with the performance. We also have SE customers on similar machines, also with good performance. All you should need to do with your 4GL programs is recompile them (including the forms). Everything should work as is. There are some new features that you may want to look into after you have upgraded. You will need to unload all your data and reload them into the new DB. I wouldn't even try to do an inplace update even to SE. Yours is too old. (If you realy want (or need) to try there are ways to make it work though.) Also be aware that even with SE you have to play with update statistics. If you do this wrong you might see some very poor performance due to joins beeing done in the wrong order. This *might* be a reason to go with SE 5.x. I would however still go to 7.x :VERSIONS :------------------ :I'm not sure what version the RDBMS is but dbschema and dbload both :report INFORMIX-SQL 2.1. :form4gl and fgldb both report INFORMIX-4GL 1.1. Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org