Re: Is IBM actually doing something with IDS?

Rajesh Nair wrote: > How do you calculate cost? It appears from reading this that you are > basing your cost just on the cost of purchase. Maybe you should consider : > > a) The cost of maintaining the database > b) The cost of database downtime > c) The cost of support > > to name a few, in short the "Total Cost of Ownership" > > Remember, nothing is really "free", not even MS-Access in the long run :-) > > > Sincerely > Raj > Free IDS without paid support is useful in 2 cases: 1. When support is not necessary There are 3 classes of such applications: - micro applications and services for small business (like designing website with database containing just list of products, or list of contacts); - open source applications for general use (like Bugzilla, Wikipedia, LAMP); - demo application provided with bundled database (I'm not going to pay support for IDS on my laptop just to make sure that my presentation of it will not crash); although application is in demo version it requires small database without time-bomb. Cost of maintenance? it's enough to copy a database file or directory to second disk from time to time. You can't expect more from users who even don't know that database is part of the application. Cost of downtime? it depends on the business, usually very small. Support from application vendor is more important than from database vendor (user often do not know what database is used). Certainly this is not a business case for IBM. It works in different way: if you have free zero-maintenance database then it is gaining popularity without great marketing. Examples are mysql, MS Access, MS SQL Express. I think that IDS also can be used in zero-maintenance database scenario (you only need to set TAPEDEV to /dev/null :-). 2. When support doesn't work This is my own personal experience: I have never received from Informix support anything useful although I work with Informix almost from the beginning (since Informix Turbo) and I saw many bugs during this time. In every case it was easier and faster to make bug workaround in the application by vendor's HelpDesk than waiting for Informix solution. In case of unexpected system failure with data corruption the only recommended action by Informix support was to restore database from archive, which was not a new idea for us. Fortunately such bad things don't occur often - Informix is really stable. Therefore my current company resigned few years ago from paying support to Informix (with exceptions for few critical systems, just in case). My bosses come to conclusion that this is just waste of money. We will probably sign a new support contract because of another reason: free upgrades to newer IDS releases (ok, there are other reasons too). IDS support is not exception: with other system software we have similar problems (have Microsoft support diagnosed all your Windows issues? or at least tried to?). In general we can count more on application vendor support. Cost of maintenance - in case of IDS are probably less than cost of OS maintenance (in Windows: filesystem backup, antyvir updates, restarting after applying OS patches require more attention than database). Database downtime - probably application vendor can help you with this faster and for smaller amount of money than Informix support. Regards, Robert