Re: update statistics not recommended!

Art S. Kagel wrote: > > Neil Truby wrote: > > > > My new site has a third-party financial package (Lawsons), running on > > v7.13. The underlying DBMS is Informix. The Lawsons help desk has told > > me that they recommend that we never run UPDATE STATISTICS, as it will > > degrade performance. Their reasoning, allegedly based on empirical > > evidence of their users, is that all their SQL is written with where > > clauses, and the indexes that exist will be used, which is what is > > required. If we run an UPDATE STATS, we might risk unexpected and > > undesirable access paths. A caveat is added that, under v7.23, some > > customers have experienced benefits from an UPDATE STATISTICS LOW, and > > that we might run it, but prepared to remove the statistics so derived > > if performance nose-dives. > > > > Well, sounds like bollocks to me, but does anyone else have any views > > or, better still, experience of this software packeage running with > > Informix? > > Sounds like REALLY badly written software to me. > Carryover from the flat-file days. Programs are written in COBOL. Personal opinions on improvement are available via EMail. They've actually gotten a bit better over time. John Carlson Informix DBA WH Smith, Inc.