Why more than one sqlexec process ?

I'm a new Informix user (and my boss told me to be the DBA) and there's one thing about about the database server I just don't understand. If two different users on the same machine start the demo applications that come with Informix-4GL (build with i4gl and INFORMIX-SE) there seem to be two sqlexec processes running in the background. I always thought there is only one database server process which handles all the requests from different users and different application programs for the same database. And it seems that the application program itself spawns this server process. Isn't it possible to start only one background sqlexec process to which the application programs send their requests ?? How do these two (or more) server processes manage consistency in changing data in the database. And isn't this a waste of processing time and memory having several servers running on the same database ?? I wonder about thist because I formerly worked with ORACLE and there was only one server process running in the background. Thanks for any hint on this Andreas Ahrens ---------------snip---------------snap---------------snup---------------- ======================================================================= |Andreas Ahrens | EMail: aa@ix.de | |iX - Multiuser Multitasking Magazin | | |Editor | | |Heinz Heise Verlag GmbH & Co KG | FAX: +49 511 547 47 33 | |Helstorferstr. 7 | | |D-3000 Hannover 61 | Tel.: +49 511 547 47 66 | =======================================================================