Re: Migrating from Oracle to Informix

> In my software company, we have a pretty large application developed using > Oracle as the RDBMS. Due mainly to business reasons, we came up with the idea > to replace Oracle with Informix as the RDBMS platform. Excellent idea! :-) > Any help with the following is welcome: > 1. Known problems with such a procedure. Some points which I am already > aware are: different data types, no sequence generator, no array > processing, > rowID is different, etc. Different data types: it should be fairly straightforward to map Oracle datatypes to Informix using sed or some similar high level tool. :-) What do you mean by no sequence generator? You shouldn't really depend on the value of the rowid within your apps. Something else to consider is that Oracle and Informix have different syntax for stored procedures, and that Informix is limited to 18 character table and column names (as per the ANSI standard). > 2. Any workarounds for Oracle Forms (or CDE or Developer/2000) applications? > Rewriting using New Era is an option. How about ODBC or open gateway? Judging by the volume of data you have, I'm not sure ODBC is a good option. You might have performance hassles. New Era is (IMO) a good option. We've gotten the application partitioning to work at a couple of sites and it's pretty quick. But be warned, there is a learning curve. > 3. Does Informix bring significant technical advantages to the table? This week it does, next week, who knows? We've found that Informix is significantly cheaper (price/performance), better architected and easier to administer. YAMMV. > 4. Assuming I am an experienced Oracle DBA. How long would it take to master > Informix at a reasonable level? I trained a bloke about a month ago. He (sort of) was an Oracle DBA, all the other trainees were Informix developers. He was way ahead of the class and by the end of a weeks training I would have happily let him loose on any of my sites. > 5. Did anyone ever tried this? I'm sure they have. > 6. Is this really a good idea at all? Absolutely. Good luck, and feel free to call anytime for help. -- Ciao, Billy +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Billy Wheeler Junior Programmer / Director The West Solutions Group | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | (E) billy@west.co.za (U) http://www.west.co.za/billy.html | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | WARNING: sending me junk-email will be interpreted as granting permission to | | bomb your offices and machine-gun your children. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+