RE: Informix Support, Where Are You?

I have a few comments about Informix Tech Support. I have always gotten an efficient, courteous Tech Support person. If you were to go back and look at the support logs from my phone calls you would probably find that the customer was helped every time. From Tech Support point of view this is probably true, from my point of view this is not always the case. The PROBLEMS 1. Three releases in a row I had trouble with DBLOAD. Scripts that I had broke. Problems with upper and lower case of keywords and problems with too many delimited variables (if 11 or 12 is too many). 2. CONSTRUCT bug core dumps when query on last field. 3. Long Queries as a result of the new optimizer in 4.0 These are just a few of my calls. In all of these problems the records would show that I was helped by Tech Support. The HELP Number 1. There is another bug in DBLOAD we don't know when it will be fixed, you will have to talk to Sales about a new release. Number 2. It's a bug we don't know when it will be fixed, but it is high on the priority list, customer was helped because Tech Support said to put a dummy field at the end. I did not use release 4.0 for 9 MONTHS because of this bug. I finally broke down and dummied up some screens and construct statements. Number 3. Queries are still causing me trouble. The optimizer seems to insist on doing long joins before applying some simple filters to an indexed table. Example: select s.sno, s.batchno, r.trayid from sample s, result r where s.sno = r.sno and s.batchno = 15 batchno is indexed, sno is indexed in both tables. Query Optimizer joins all of the rows from sample and result by sno and runs them all through the filter to find batchno 15. This did not happen in the 2.0 releases. It would have picked the 30 plus samples from sample for batchno 15 and then joined them with the 240 plus rows in result. result has 8 times the rows that sample does. Should it not use the indexed filter on the smaller table first? The FIX is to split this into two queries. This is the help that Tech Support will document. Believe me the customer was not helped. Tech Support does not cause me any grief, they are just working people like me. I personally would find it difficult giving advice to clients knowing that some of the problems that I was hearing and dealing will not be resolved for many clients for MONTHS. Attention Informix: Do not rely on notes from Tech Support to determine whether the company is addressing the needs and complaints of its customers. -- Michael J. Kuhn Consultant phone:410-254-7060 Email: rhlab!kuhn@uunet.uu.net or uunet!rhlab!kuhn c/o Baltimore Rh Typing Laboratory, Inc. phone:410-225-9595