For Management
Oninit® MySQL-2-Informix — Use the MySQL Tools You Already Have With the Informix Data You Already Trust
The data of record for many businesses still lives in Informix. The applications that need it — new analytics, an off-the-shelf reporting tool, a customer-facing app the team wants to build with the connectors they already know — increasingly speak MySQL. That mismatch is usually paid for in one of three ways: a parallel database with an ETL pipeline that quietly falls behind, an expensive integration platform, or a multi-quarter rewrite.
Oninit® MySQL-2-Informix gives you a fourth option: a small proxy that lets the MySQL world talk to Informix natively, without changing either side.
The business case
- Faster delivery. Projects that need Informix data — a new analytics platform, an off-the-shelf product, an in-house application built with the connectors the team already knows — can move forward immediately, without waiting on a database migration or a custom translator.
- Lower risk. The proxy translates wire protocols. It does not change the application code and does not change the database. The system of record stays exactly where it is.
- Less platform sprawl. One small daemon replaces the “parallel MySQL plus ETL” pattern teams reach for when they want MySQL-shaped access to Informix data. The data stays in one place.
- Container-friendly when it needs to be. The pure-C SQLI backend has no IBM client dependency on the deployment host, so the proxy fits into container images and locked-down hosts without licensing the IBM client on every node.
- Migration optionality. If you eventually move off Informix, the same proxy keeps the application running on MySQL while the data is rehomed; the cutover becomes a database swap, not an application rewrite.
Why Oninit
Oninit has supported the global Informix community for two decades as “the Down System Specialists.” The proxy is built and supported by the same team that gets called when other people's Informix systems are misbehaving — the people who already know the engine in production conditions, productised so the customer's team can connect their MySQL-shaped applications without rewriting either side.
What it removes from the risk register
- “Our application speaks MySQL but the data is in Informix, and we don't have a clean way to connect them.”
- “The integration platform we'd use for this costs more than the rest of the project combined.”
- “We're stuck rewriting the application against a different driver because the off-the-shelf one only speaks MySQL.”
- “Our parallel reporting copy is hours behind production.”
Time to value
| Step | Typical effort |
|---|---|
| Receive the binary, install on a host | Hours. Single configuration file describing the Informix endpoint and license key. |
| Connect the first MySQL client end to end | Hours. The MySQL mysql(1) command and the application's existing connector both work without changes. |
| Validate translation against your schema | Days. An integration suite covering the catalog, type-mapping, and DML surface against IBM Informix Dynamic Server makes “does this work for our queries” a reproducible question. |
| Standing service for the application tier | Weeks. Pick the backend that fits the deployment story (IBM-client-on-host or pure-C SQLI), wire the proxy into the standard service-management story, and ship. |
Next step
A 30-minute scoping call. We'll review the application stack, the Informix environment, and the kinds of MySQL queries that need to work end to end. From there a working trial against a non-production Informix instance is typically a few days.
Call +1-913-732-8892 (US) or +44-2081-337529 (UK), or email support.info@oninit.com.