Can't install Informix Dynamic Server 7.30 for Linux

I recently successfully installed a free version of Informix-SE on my Linux box with no serious problems. Several people recommended that I consider upgrading to Informix Dynamic Server instead (which is not free, but does have a free trial period), so I downloaded it (an almost 30 meg ZIP file!), and attempted to install it. I had no problems unzipping it, and it created three directories: ids730uc71_linux/con ids730uc71_linux/ids ids730uc71_linux/sdk each containing an RPM file. The RPM files have truly bizzare names like "112133711331742.RPM", etc. When I try to install the files, I get an error as follows: # rpm -i 112133711331742.RPM Data type 9 not supprted Here's what I know so far: * This is probably more of a "Linux" error, not an Informix one, but I thought someone here might be able to help (or point me to a non-RPM trial version of IDS). * I seem to remember (vaguely) that it's possible to use cpio or tar or ar or one of those programs to "untar" an RPM file that won't install normally-- anyone have more details on this? * I've tried upgrading my version of RPM to no avail. I'm using 2.2.6 right now. Possibly dumb question: * Is IDS essentially the same product as Informix-SE? In other words, is it also an SQL server? Or is it completely different and better? Does it make sense to ask "what's the difference between IDS and Informix-SE" or is that comparing apples and oranges?

mathprof@bigfoot.com wrote: [SNIP] I cannot tackle your installation problem, I had no trouble myself, but I'll take on the last. > Possibly dumb question: > > * Is IDS essentially the same product as Informix-SE? In other words, is > it also an SQL server? Or is it completely different and better? Does it > make sense to ask "what's the difference between IDS and Informix-SE" or > is that comparing apples and oranges? More like comparing Macintosh and Granny Smith apples. Yes both are SQL database servers but the entire design and philosophy of each are different. SE 7.24 is the latest generation of Informix's original database engine. It is blazingly fast and simple to use and administer for smaller databases and fewer clients. It has no variable length data types (varchar, TEXT, DATA) and starts a UNIX process for each client which is actually a private copy of the engine for that client. Client concurrency is maintained through OS level locking and each client has its own small private cache. Table size is limited to <2GB and only 8 columns per index are supported. IDS is a whole 'nother animal. It is lightning fast for even HUGE databases and tables (4TB) and massive numbers of clients. It is multiprocessed and multithreaded and the single engine services all requests for all users using shared memory buffers, mutex and semaphore locks and conditions. The server supports BLOBS and varchar and with the Universal Data Option (UDO - not yet available for Linux but we live in hope) you can even create object relational databases and your own custom data types and extend the functionality of the engine with DataBlades that can add new data types, new indexing methods, or sorting methods, and additional built-in like functions and aggregates. With the Extended Parallel Option (XPO) it can spread a database across multiple nodes in a cluster and virtually support an unlimited database size. Art S. Kagel