Re: pricing for informix info?

We are going through negotiations with Informix now on our annual maintenance contract. Our problem has been with the definitions Informix gave us which define a user. You cannot quantify a user from this definition. When I asked how they determine this value they said they would send an engineer to make the determination. I politely declined and asked how they do it and I would provide the information to them. I was told by the system engineer they do a "onstat -u" over time and use the "maximum concurrent" value to determine number of users for a license. Anybody who understands how Informix starts sessions knows this is not anywhere close to being a good indicator of user counts. As a result, we asked months ago for CPU pricing. We were told they do not do CPU based pricing. I suggested a model to Informix during this conference call that was acceptable to my management and our Informix sales contact. Late into our conference call with them, to our astonishment, the senior sales exec asked how many CPUs we have. After we told him how many he said that the number of users is 10 per CPU! I asked when this became policy and he said "nineteen seventy...no, I mean 1996 or 1997.". Which is it? My question is has anyone ever herd of this policy? On one two-CPU test machine we have a 5 user license. Why didn't this come up last year? We never received any official notification that policy had changed. This company has been using Informix for ten years. We have no problem with spending money for maintenance. We just want to be dealt with in a fair, ethical, and professional manner. Mark Baumgartner Cardinal Distribution "Obnoxio The Clown" <obnoxio@hotmail.com> on 08/28/99 09:56:16 AM To: mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk cc: informix-list@iiug.org (bcc: Mark Baumgartner/FOL/CDI/CHI/US) Subject: Re: pricing for informix info? From: mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie) > >In article <7q3sni$569$1@news.xmission.com>, >Obnoxio The Clown <obnoxio@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > >From: "Art S. Kagel" <kagel@bloomberg.net> > >> > >>Informix pricing is based on the host's size or power classification so > >>if you transfer the license to another host in the same class no >problem. > > > >Ummmm....no. IDS is licensed on a per user basis, irrespective of the > >machine you run on. > >I bought a per-user licence for IDS/LE for some development stuff and >a small project here but was told by an Intraware rep that if I wanted >to run a web/database gateway project with Informix then a per-CPU >licence would be needed. Quite correct, forgot about that. But it's $X per CPU, irrespective of whether the CPU is an Intel 386 or a MIPS R10000... ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com