Re: Informix vs. Oracle

From article <1992Aug26.231313.28687@risky.ecs.umass.edu>, by mathews@bones.ecs.umass.edu (Mathew J Mathews): > My boss was recently told by a salesman that Informix would soon be the new > RDBMS standard on top of Oracle. Needless to say, she asked me to investigate. > I have not been able to find very much written on Informix. Could anyone > give me their 2 cents, and/or point me to a good source of info? > > Thanks, > I have had the opportunity to attempt to use both Oracle and Informix. I have been using Informix for about four years now, and overall it is a powerful and easy to use Unix RDBMS. Of course, there are the problems such as bugs and lack of some features that would come in handy. But it is a product that you can pick up and get started in very quickly. Oracle on the other hand is one of the more confusing RDBMSs that I have ever seen. First of all the installation takes a long time to do. You have to log in as root install the disks, then log in as oracle and do another installation. In order to get into the separate products you need an additional user name and password. It literally took a week to install Oracle on a 386 because the installation disks and their instructions were incorrect. Oracle's techinical support line, although easier to get a technician than Informix were basically clueless on how to fix problems. They kept telling me I had a corrupted /etc/passwd file, which was not the case. So Oracle sits in a box in the corner. If I had to choose between the two products, there would not even be a hesitation. Informix! Neal Leitner ..att!emdbl1!nll AT&T Bell Labs