Re: Informix vs. Oracle

I have worked with ORACLE 1R3, INFORMIX-SE 2.10.03G, and INFORMIX-TURBO 3M. The oracle software is very nice and quite powerful. When accessing the db, we had to login each time. This proved to be rather cumbersome and time consuming, but you could say it had a high level of security. To the best of my knowledge everything worked the way it should (utilities, etc). We had to go through UNISYS for our support which I think could have been better. The SQL was very close to the SQL that informix uses( a few diffs). The informix software is alittle more open and easier to access data. If you put alittle prethought into how you want to secure your data or tables, you can achieve a very secure db with faster access. I have found some differences between the runtime DBLOAD utility vs. developmental. This adds to alot of frustration when you are trying to port a system and something does not work quite right. I asked informix about this and they didn't know why it wouldn't work. I have gotten very frustrated with informix support not just this incident but other also. All in all, I favor INFORMIX because of it's ease of use. Brian MacWilliams USAMC SIMA, CHAMBERSBURG