Re: What is happening to Informix?

I agree with Fernando. I have open cases with Oracle and Sybase dating back to 1995 and 1991 respectively. OK, they probably closed them by now, but the point is that I NEVER GOT AN RESOLUTION TO THOSE TWO PROBLEMS! Informix had the best support in the industry BEFORE 1991 and honestly, even though I don't think the past 11 years with IBM have been a picnic, support HAS gotten better not worse (OK except for that first year or two when you-know-who was trying to kill the product). Art Art S. Kagel Advanced DataTools (www.advancedatatools.com) Blog: http://informix-myview.blogspot.com/ Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that my own opinions are my own opinions and do not reflect on my employer, Advanced DataTools, the IIUG, nor any other organization with which I am associated either explicitly, implicitly, or by inference. Neither do those opinions reflect those of other individuals affiliated with any entity with which I am affiliated nor those of the entities themselves. On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 5:31 PM, Fernando Nunes <domusonline@gmail.com>wrote: > If you feel better, than it's good. For the readers, this will probably be > a politically incorrect post... > > > On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 8:45 PM, <davidegrove@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I'm sorry, I just have to vent a bit. >> >> For the second time in 6 months, we have just experienced Informix >> crashing (assert failures) due to iniput of a syntactically and >> semantically correct SQL statement. The first time, we were on 11.5 (FC7, >> I think), tech support said the problem would be fixed in the next release. >> Two days ago (a few hours after we upgraded to 11.7FC5) another crash due >> to inability of Informix to handle proper SQL (this one had some LEFT OUTER >> JOINs). This time we got a "W" release, and the problem is solved... >> > > Any crash, and I really mean any crash is a reason to be upset. But you > somehow seem to imply that it would be ok if the statement had some kind of > problem. And this really surprises me. A database engine has a lot of > things to do... It has to parse the statement, check the parameters (for > prepared statements), check the security, calculate the query plan and > execute it. All this steps are done by code, and any code may contain bugs. > From my point of view, parsing the code and the parameters is the easier > part. Calculate the query plan and execute it is a much more complex task > and as such much more error prone. Should it crash? Of course not, but it's > a much more probable phase than the ones before. > > >> >> BUT, it is simply astounding to me, and unfathomable, that a mature >> database engine could be crashed by the input of proper SQL. >> > > A crash before is much more strange. And I'm sure it happened before also. > > >> >> I am left defensless in responding to a new hotshot develooper who has >> nothing but contempt for Informix ("a toy database") because his SQL has >> crashed the system twice in 6 months. In the past 10 years, Informix has >> been like a rock. I can't even recall one crash. But, recently... what's >> happening? >> > > You could suggest that developer to google for other database bug list... > He will surely get a different perspective. Once he does that, ask him to > open a problem at their support and compare the time it takes, and the > answers he gets. From your said history you hit two different bugs that IBM > was able to identify and fix. I spent half to two thirds of my customer > facing time (most of my working time) in an environment with at least 4 > different types of databases. Interestingly enough apparently only Informix > has open problems with support... why? Not because it crashes (I could get > you uptimes of really interesting environments), but simply because they > constantly change the use and test new features and we hit issues and > doubts. And specially because they almost gave up opening tickets in other > vendors because of the terrible support they get (and because the Informix > DBA team is much more demanding than the others (a workaround is treated as > just that and not a definitive solution) > >> >> There, I feel better now. >> > > Me too... but really, the only purposes of this post are: > 1- Defend that a crash is a crash whenever it happens. And the SQL > "quality" should have nothing to do with it. A crash should never happen, > period > 2- There is nothing wrong "now". Try to browse through the list of fixed > bugs in every Informix fixpack. All of them will show possible crashes, > wrong results, bad performance etc. The same applies to all databases. > It's just the way software is and software makers try to fight it. Ask your > developer if he would consider more normal that one of his programs crashed > while parsing user input, than if it crashed, core dumps or whatever after > the user presses "SAVE". Naturally the quality perception derives from your > experience. Two bugs in 6 months after 10 years of stability can of course > change the perception. But it does not show a trend or a change. > 3- Your two situations were checked and worked on by tech support. They > worked with the data generated by the engine while crashing and the > internal database. Answers were found and fixes were produced or were > already available. If Informix had another (less efficient) architecture, > with less shared resources it would be easier to keep away from crashes > when something goes wrong. In fact with some configurations we can prevent > it from crashing sometimes. But a crash is typically generated by an assert > fail. An assert failure is a generic term that means that a condition test > (integrity) has failed and it may be unsafe to proceed. It shows that the > code has robustness built in. It does a lot of integrity checking while > it's working to prevent worse problems > > Now, of course a crash is a nasty thing and nobody likes them. We surely > don't. Hopefully you'll continue working with more stability. > By the way, this crash happened in tests or production? > > > Regards. > -- > Fernando Nunes > Portugal > > http://informix-technology.blogspot.com > My email works... but I don't check it frequently... > > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list > >