Re: Informix vs. Oracle wuz: Re: Informix?

Jack Parker wrote: >Plus grand soupir. I'm not sure anybody really cares what you had for lunch! ;-) >10 years ago, h*ll 8 years ago for that matter. Unix was not in wide use >outside of the federal government, universities and small businesses. (Ok >joe, ted and carol - yes your company has been using it since 1943). Well, I feel compelled to point out that AT&T and Bell Labs have never been the federal gov't or a university, and have not been a small business in a considerably long time. Unix has been in wide use there for considerably longer than 10 years. Remember that Unix was invented for telecom use. > If you look back to that era, what was THE database on Unix? I seem >to remember reading the top Unix software packages list at that time - >Informix won it by a landslide, Oracle wasn't even mentioned. Actually, Unify was THE Unix database at least until the mid 80s or so, at which time Informix started making serious inroads. By 1990 or so, Informix SE practically owned ATT/BL database business on the switch side (billing side was and in many cases still is mainframe territory). There were two basic reasons for this: Unify's design placed practical limits on the size of the database (not to mention requiring complete database rebuild for ANY schema change), and Informix SE was the only alternative (ok, C-ISAM as well, but if you weren't inclined to build your own SQL engine, then SE was it). What really won most of the Unix market for Informix was not the engine, but rather 4gl. It was simply the best thing out there. Of course, we all know the dangers of sitting on one's laurels ;-). [snip] >Now about all of these businesses which have now adopted Unix. What did >they used to use? > >Now why on earth would you think that this had no bearing on market share? If you are suggesting that a large share of Oracle's Unix business is from shops swicthing to Unix from mainframes et. al. and sticking with the database vendor they have been using for so many years, they you are, as Jonathan might say, "spot on". A thousand shames on Informix for not moving to intercept that decision by marketing Informix so damn well that no manager making such a decision would ever consider NOT talking to Informix BEFORE making it. In almost 10 years at Informix I shudder to think about the deals lost over the *impression* upper management (at potential customers) had of Informix vs. Oracle, even when they ceded the technical edge to Informix. And those were only the deals we got into. How many were there where we never even got the opportunity to offer an alternative? The biggest reason for the current market share distribution is 17 years of ABYSMAL marketing by Informix. And there is STILL no signs of improvement. What's up with that? -- Dave "That's just my opinion - I could be wrong." - Dennis Miller