Subject: Re: Standard Engine and OnLine - Which one and When?

Path: emory!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!news.iastate.edu!news From: GO.MSB@isumvs.iastate.edu Newsgroups: comp.databases.informix Message-ID: <1992Jan16.224542.19380@news.iastate.edu> Date: 16 Jan 92 22:45:42 GMT Sender: news@news.iastate.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA This bounced on direct reply so am posting to group. In article <1992Jan15.144121.763@halexv.uucp>, greg@halexv.uucp (Gregory F. Hogg) writes: >In article <1992Jan14.134405.8825@kingston.ac.uk> cs_e266@kingston.ac.uk (Edwin Yau) writes: >> >> Standard Engine and OnLine - Which one? - and When? >> >>about the difference between it an the Informix `Standard Engine' (SE). > >One difference is that OnLine has VARCHAR and SE does not. A VARCHAR >is a CHAR field without fixed legth. I have a number of databases >with long CHAR fields for the longest possible values. The problem >is that a CHAR(50) field takes up 50 bytes of storage even if the >field is NULL. With a VARCHAR it takes up litte or no space if the >field is NULL. > >I have used both SE and ONLINE and found that ONLINE is much faster >for most operations. > > +++++++++++++++++++ Greg Hogg > +++ +++ --------------------------------------------------------------- My understanding of these engines is that the SE (Standard Engine) was an earlier product of Informix. It is simple to use and requires very little maintenance. Database files are maintained in the users file space. The OnLine is an OLTP product designed to compete with Oracle, Ingres, and Sybase. It requires predefined database space(s) and a lot of "watching/ maintenance" to keep it going. A DBA (database administrator) is required to allocate database spaces and to provide user access. Sure its faster, designed to be that way, but a headache to maintain (and backup). This is the price of data integrity et al. Just my opinion. Marvin Beck Iowa State University