Does informix is reliable?

Hi. I'm just curious. We're currently having ann application that work with Interbase and maybe we plan to change our database and all our application (powerhouse). We have about 5 GIG of data in our databases. Does informix would be a good choice or not. Is it able to support huge database since we plan that in the future our database may be up to 20 GIG in a 1-2 years... Now I'm trying the "free" version for linux and I find it great but I really dunno what informix can support for huge database. Also if it support it, is there any performance problem? Tanx for answering my question.

Informix is highly scaleable, and has no trouble whatsoever in coping with databases many times larger than 20GBytes. Informix technology (in stark contrast to its marketing) is recognised as being up with, and often ahead of, other major RDBMSs, particularly in the area of performance. Informix should certainly be one of the options you consider. Neil Christian Hamel wrote in message ... >Hi. > I'm just curious. We're currently having ann application that work with >Interbase and maybe we plan to change our database and all our application >(powerhouse). We have about 5 GIG of data in our databases. Does informix >would be a good choice or not. Is it able to support huge database since we >plan that in the future our database may be up to 20 GIG in a 1-2 years... > Now I'm trying the "free" version for linux and I find it great but I >really dunno what informix can support for huge database. Also if it >support it, is there any performance problem? > Tanx for answering my question. > > > >

I've worked on a system that detects fraud cellular calls. It analyzes 50,000,000 calls a week and maintains four weeks of calls on-line. It uses in excess of 100 GB of storage, and runs on a Sun Enterprise 6000 Server with 16 processors. The database is Informix Online Dynamic Server 7.x. Thumbs up to the Informix database, thumbs down to Informix marketing. Christian Hamel wrote: > Hi. > I'm just curious. We're currently having ann application that work with > Interbase and maybe we plan to change our database and all our application > (powerhouse). We have about 5 GIG of data in our databases. Does informix > would be a good choice or not. Is it able to support huge database since we > plan that in the future our database may be up to 20 GIG in a 1-2 years... > Now I'm trying the "free" version for linux and I find it great but I > really dunno what informix can support for huge database. Also if it > support it, is there any performance problem? > Tanx for answering my question.

Christian Hamel wrote: I wasn't going to put my "me too" in here but Obnoxio has goaded me into it. Obnoxio is correct, our news machines have over 230 chunks at 2GB each which is over 460GB on a Sun E6000 w/ 20 CPUs and 6GB RAM. No problems! We have other servers with over 300GB on DG (DGUX) PentiumPro systems with 24 CPUs also no problems. IDS 7.xx will take your database to 4TB with good disk farm planning and if you need to go beyond that talk to Tim Shaeffer about his experiences with IDS/XPO 8.xx which can spread a database across multiple machines in a cluster and is virtually unlimited as to the size of the database it can support. (Tim?) Art S. Kagel > Hi. > I'm just curious. We're currently having ann application that work with > Interbase and maybe we plan to change our database and all our application > (powerhouse). We have about 5 GIG of data in our databases. Does informix > would be a good choice or not. Is it able to support huge database since we > plan that in the future our database may be up to 20 GIG in a 1-2 years... > Now I'm trying the "free" version for linux and I find it great but I > really dunno what informix can support for huge database. Also if it > support it, is there any performance problem? > Tanx for answering my question.

Well Art, Essentially you're right about 8.x, keep in mind the dirty little secret about 8.x is its simplicity. 8.x is basically a stripped-down version of the other engines, although this is probably an inaccurate term, I guess "leaner" would be more technically correct, but even at that there's still a lot going on with 8.x that is soooo close to 7.x. And no it's not a 5.x clone either, but its own beast. The big thing about the architecture to 8.x that I see is the coserver references throughout the engine, and quite a few more tables for managing as you would expect, the communication between nodes. Anyway, the right of passage for the data base user who goes from mere SMP to MPP, is in understanding that Informix uses shared-nothing, which means simply that the servers in a cluster really don't care about each other at all, other than to talk to each other through a high-speed switching bus, in the form of UDP. Knowing this, we then see that each server is essentially by itself, like SMP, along with its disk drives etc. This means that an MPP cluster using shared nothing is essentially unlimited in size. Data is spread across each node, in fragments. Large Data Base? No problem. To keep things in perspective, Oracle does not use MPP, in comparison, they do not have the architecture to support it even though they say they do. Instead, Oracle poopoos MPP as being more expensive than their shared disk mess. They defer to several SMP boxes sharing one disk array, and point you to the distributed data base arena, where you must build lots of little data bases instead of one big one. Messy. See also "Oracle Data Warehousing", Wiley. I believe they also point to this mess as their OLTP solution, but haven't read up on it enough to know. For Informix 8.x , terms like scalability take on not only the dimension of n-CPUs/server, but also server groups etc. The big city of data bases, compared to a single SMP box. Oracle will remain SMP for the foreseeable future, it is easier to sell old stuff with new brochures than re-architect their engine. To answer the original, immediate question, yes, Informix can handle your 20GB data base quite easy. Most shops will continue with simple,single SMP boxes, however, this is only because of the prohibitive cost of XPS implementations. What would be really smart, is to get Informix-8.x-on-Linux/Alpha or even simply 8.x on Intel Linux, so that low-end clusters could be built and folks really get a flavor for real data base power. XPS was ported to NT, over a year ago, there is no reason why it should not be available on Linux. This would allow developers out there to get their hands on it just like 7.x is today. I would love to build a 5-node system running XPS for less than $10,000.00 US. It would probably rock. I can get Intel boxes each for around $1000.00 US, imagine 5 or 6 of them clustered for XPS, along with a few disks in each of them. It would be a major savings in cost of hardware, and still deliver a data warehouse or MPP OLTP system. After all the one with the smartest data base company really wins. Thanks, Tim PS to Billy, yes, I am still a DBA working on Informix 8.x and not Oracle. :-) "Art S. Kagel" wrote: > > Christian Hamel wrote: > > I wasn't going to put my "me too" in here but Obnoxio has goaded me > into it. > > Obnoxio is correct, our news machines have over 230 chunks at 2GB each > which is over 460GB on a Sun E6000 w/ 20 CPUs and 6GB RAM. No problems! > We have other servers with over 300GB on DG (DGUX) PentiumPro systems > with 24 CPUs also no problems. IDS 7.xx will take your database to 4TB > with good disk farm planning and if you need to go beyond that talk to > Tim Shaeffer about his experiences with IDS/XPO 8.xx which can spread a > database across multiple machines in a cluster and is virtually > unlimited as to the size of the database it can support. (Tim?) > > Art S. Kagel > > > Hi. > > I'm just curious. We're currently having ann application that work with > > Interbase and maybe we plan to change our database and all our application > > (powerhouse). We have about 5 GIG of data in our databases. Does informix > > would be a good choice or not. Is it able to support huge database since we > > plan that in the future our database may be up to 20 GIG in a 1-2 years... > > Now I'm trying the "free" version for linux and I find it great but I > > really dunno what informix can support for huge database. Also if it > > support it, is there any performance problem? > > Tanx for answering my question. -- - -- --- Tim Schaefer ---- tschaefe@mindspring.com --- http://www.inxutil.com -- -

In article <373AEE5B.1E3F@bloomberg.net>, kagel@bloomberg.net wrote: > Christian Hamel wrote: > ... > ... our news machines have over 230 chunks at 2GB each > which is over 460GB on a Sun E6000 w/ 20 CPUs and 6GB RAM. No problems! > We have other servers with over 300GB on DG (DGUX) PentiumPro systems > with 24 CPUs also no problems. IDS 7.xx will take your database to 4TB > with good disk farm planning and if you need to go beyond that talk to > ... With all these good news about Informix Dynamic Server, does the same hold true with Informix SE - well, at least in principle? I am planning for an installation with only a few GB (not more than 10) and 35 users working with the database. The server should run on a Linux machine (Intel based). Does this seem reasonable? Or does SE get to its limits in this scenario? --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- ---Share what you know. Learn what you don't.---