Informix vs. Oracle - Summary of Replies

Hi all - Here is the compiled list of replies I received. It will be posted and mailed to all those who requested a copy. Thanks again for the info. The revised score turned out to be a little closer than a gazillion to 1: Oracle: 9 Informix: 2 Actually, there were a few more in favor of Oracle that I omitted. Sorry if I overlooked anyone in this list. -Mathew. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mathew J. Mathews University of Massachusetts, Housing Telecommunications Office email: mathews@risky.ecs.umass.edu Phone: (413) 545-6293/1000(Vox) FAX: (413) 545-1211 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================== From: wyvern!asoper@uunet.UU.NET Date: Wed Aug 26 23:40:37 1992 Sure. I bought Informix and then noticed how many different products can be integrated with Oracle. Part of the reason Informix became a large concern is that AT&T used to buy almost half their product. aubrey Aubrey Soper asoper@azania.twuug.com Mistah Kurtz, he dead. VA Beach, VA : /dev/vox/804-422-0950 :<deader'n a mackerel>< =========================================================================== Date: 26 Aug 92 19:50:58 PDT (Wed) From: john@mikejag.wimsey.bc.ca (John A. Green) Hi Mathew! I'd like to apologize for this reply; it could very well be the LEAST helpful of the gazillion replies that you are likely to get. But hey, the devil made me do it! ;-) That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard all month. Best wishes in your search for a decent database product. There are a number of them out there. -- John A Green PROGRESS programmer at large =========================================================================== From: Tony Heskett <A.Heskett@bnr.co.uk> Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 10:09:46 BST That's salesmen for you. Completely untrue. There isn't a great deal written down - you could get the book list from walt@rmy.emory.edu by asking him nicely, or anon ftp: mathcs.emory.edu 128.140.2.1 /pub/informix/das13 As to who's in the lead, over here it's Oracle, Ingres, then Informix/Sybase and after that Progress backing up the rear. Oracle is definitely the biggest and runs on pretty much anything. You might prefer coding in Informix to Oracle, of course, but that's a different question. Hope that helps. Cheers - Tony ____________________________________________________________ Tony Heskett th@bnr.co.uk Tel: (+44) 279 402637, (+44) 831 546576 BNR, London Road, Harlow, CM17 9NA Fax: (+44) 279 451434 =========================================================================== From: garth@comm.mot.com (Garth Kennedy) Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 7:58:29 CDT Well, Informix hasn't been in here trying to give us that line recently. We are in the process of evaluating alternatives (technical and other) for a LARGE manufacturing system. At the moment, we are going through a first pass evaluation of various DBMS vendor products. In summary, our requirements are for a widely distributed system operating on whatever hardware is locally available. (Oh did I mention the system could be any where on the face of the earth!) The system must be scaleable so that an individual node, run on any thing from a PC to a mainframe or other "large specialized box". Anyway, that is a very simplified view of the high level requirements. To date (remember high level) Informix does not have the following: 1. Procedural SQL 2. They do not normally row lock, mostly page locking 3. It is not clear how they handle deadlocks 4. Stored procedures do not seem to be supported. 5. You are limited to 32,000 tables (OK even we wont get that large !) 6. The security does not appear to have the flexibility of Oracle v7 7. The support of multiple user languages appears to be weak. 8. Global naming (of DB objects) appears to be missing 9. The coupling of distributed DBs is stronger than we would like. 10. Not having the ability to take snapshots of tables (for purposes of replication) is a problem. 11. It appears that triggers are not fully supported. 12. Their server is single threaded. 13. Support of multiple "foreign" user languages on a per-session basis may be an issue. 14. The DBA tool set in Informix is no where near as supportive as that in Oracle. Basically, Informix v5 doesn't handle a truly distributed environment as well as Oracle v7. IMHO: People have used Informix because it was 1. cheaper and 2. faster than oracle. However, Oracle is infinitely more "bullet-proof" than Informix. We have people that have started on Oracle, switched to Informix (because of cost) and then switched back to Oracle when they ran into problems. Obviously, I am not very popular with the Informix Sales people, but I have had more problems with Informix than Oracle. (As an example, I have a factory floor system - transaction driven - that has been running for the last two years (6 days/wk - 24 hrs/day) with almost no support. We have had two incidents that were system related (both were problems related to communications between the distributed DB) in that time. My sysadmin duties consist of weekly report that details the down time on the mainframe to which the system is a similar system (in another plant) that is Informix based that has two people full time supporting (they are also 1 shift 5 days/week).) gee this ran on longer than I expected, I hope it helps you. Actually I am showing Informix as my second/third choice for a DB. Unfortunately both second and third places have problems (Informix & Sybase). In the right situations, Informix is a good solution, but there are issues that may apply in each installation that "mold" the selection process. (In ours it is the distribution, 24X7 and DBA issues). Let me know (email or usenet feed) what the general feeling turns out. -- | Garth Kennedy Internet: garth@comm.mot.com | Shared Systems/Component Products Internal Mail: IL02-2317 | Factory Systems Voice: (708) 576-3786 | Motorola Inc. FAX: (708) 538-3632 Oh - I forgot to mention, one of Informix's selling points in the past has been performance. This has been gained by completely bypassing the operating system and playing games. (If you ever have to chase one of those problems ...) If you can look at a "Transaction Processing Performance Council Report" they give a collection of performance ratings for databases on various hardware platforms. Generally everyone uses Informix, because they get better numbers for the hardware. (by playing games behind the covers) The 16 July 92 report shows a direct comparison between Informix 5 (?) and Oracle 7 on a DG AVIION which shows Oracle at 101 TPC-B vs Informix at 58 TPC-B. (The hardware pricing is sightly different, but that shouldn't make for a 74% difference in performance. ============================