Network performance question

Hi Informixers, on several occasions both in this group and talking to Informix employees I received information that 4.x/5.x frontend applications will suffer a performance degradation when connecting to a 7.x database since they have to go through the performance-eating "relay module". The reason for this is the change in the communication mechanism between frontend and backend; up to the 5.x backends, sockets were used, while 7.x uses shared memory. This does make sense to me when frontend and backend reside on the same machine. However, what happens when they sit on different machines? Will it make a difference whether a 4.x 4GL program on one machine runs against a 5.x Online database on another (using I-Net/I-Star), or against a 7.x DSA backend on another machine (using the Relay Module on the client)? Or is the Relay Module not necessary in a net- worked environment, only when running against a database on the same machine? What's puzzling me is that I-Net/I-Net32 for PC/Windows is the same version no matter what backend version is used, and I was told in this group that it makes no performance difference. Why should there be a difference on a a UNIX client? Regards, Richard -- +--------------------------+------------------------------------------+ | Dr. Richard Spitz | INTERNET: spitz@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de | | EDV-Gruppe Anaesthesie | Tel : +49-89-7095-3413 | | Klinikum Grosshadern | FAX : +49-89-7095-8886 | | 81366 Munich, Germany | GSM : +49-172-8933578 | +--------------------------+------------------------------------------+