Re: License policy for Informix 6.0 / 7.1

> Martin Thole <mthole@westend.com> writes: > We are planning to upgrade from INFORMIX-SE 5.x > to INFORMIX-SE 7.x , but we don't know how many > "user license" we have to buy. > > Currently we have a 32 user license for INFORMIX-SE. > But every user can start background (batch) processes > which have a own database connection. So there will be > 40-50 "sqlexecs" on the same time ! > > Must we buy a 50-user license for INFORMIX-SE 7.1 ? In one Software License Agreement I have available there is no mention of what a user is. In a Unix Products Installation Guide version 5.01 it is however said that a user is a unix login name on a Unix server. (This is in a discussion of a separate license manager that I have luckily never seen a trace of. If Informix ever starts using such an animal that is the day we have to change to another database.) Users are counted as simultaneous users. That means even if you have 32 Unix users with their own login name (possibly all are granted a set of rights on any database, or having public access) you may not need a 32 user license for the database. Also any user can, according to this, connect as many times as that user wants, even from different terminals. (If you let several persons log in using the same login-name you should probably count the persons, not the names.) In equivalent 7.1 manuals I can find no reference to what a user is. I have to assume that on Unix they expect us to count the same way. Of course any user must be able to start background processes, run multiple applications or run programs that themselves set up multiple connections to the database. If not it would become next to impossible for us to count the number of actual users. This is what we go by anyway, until we here something different from Informix. When it comes to connectivity software for PCs (Informix CLI or I-Net) Informix sadly haven't yet understood how they should license the products. Every user that will ever connect to the database need a separate license for these products. At one customer site there are about 100 employees. Only 10 of these currently use the database regularly. The other 90 could have used it anything from a few times a day to a few times every year. They don't however because the customer don't want to spend the money up front. When you buy Novell Netware you get the connectivity software (netx) with the server and can install it on any PC. Sooner or later Informix will also see the light on this one, so they can increase both the number of users and the visibility of their database in organisations and earn the money off server licenses. It's so much easier to tell a customer he needs more database user licenses when users have the applications installed and see their utility, than to have to explain this before the users even know what they can do. User demand was allways the best salesperson. Let's hope this happens sooner rather than later. Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM-data, Dalsbergstien 7, N-0170 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company