Re: Beginner's Question...

On Wed, 26 Aug 1998 12:11:39 +0200, Mark Wiewel <wiewel@legion.de> wrote: >Can someone explain the difference between Informix SE and Informix >Online in some simple words? SE stores each table in it's own Unix file and all indexes in one file per table. OnLine, or IDS (Informix Dynamic Server) as the latest releases are called, stores all tables and indexes in one disk area that is usually placed on a raw disk device (not going via the Unix file system). IDS has built in support for multiple CPUs, fragmentation of tables over many disks and many other performance enhancement items. IDS also supports BLOBs and some other things not available in SE. SE is fine for databases up to a 1 to 2 GB and a small number of users (there are installation with 100 users on SE, but typically it works fine up to 20 or so in OLTP type applications). >We are planning to install an Informix database on our SCO Open Server >5.0.4. >Any known problems with double processor boards (2x Intel Pentium II >333Mhz) and a RAID-1 system? No problems with such a configuration. With SE it's unlikely that the 2 CPUs would help much unless you have applications that require a lot of prosessing outside the database. IDS works fine on a single CPU, but for real scaling you usually want to go to at least 4 CPUs. I would probably rather use a 400 MHz or faster Pentium than 2 slower ones. RAID 1 is fine, RAID 1+0 is even better. Don't use RAID 5 as it will slow down writes and have some inherent problems with recovery and doesn't protect agains some disk failure modes. If SE is good enough for you I would rather use Linux than SCO. It's faster, more reliable and have better support in most parts of the world. IDS may get ported to Linux soon as well, but there is no information on that from Informix yet. Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)