riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/11/86)
Does anyone out there have any experience with various versions of Informix?
My organization has several medium-to-large databases running under plain old
vanilla Informix which are soon to become a whole lot bigger. Because of a
desire for improved performance and a need to revamp the databases for other
reasons anyway, we are considering starting over with Informix SQL or
Informix ESQL. Are the much-touted advantages of the latter two sufficient
to justify the hassles of changing horses in mid-stream? (We run System V
on a 3B15, a 3B2 and various 3B1s, if it matters.)
I am an infrequent user of this ut-sally account and an infrequent reader
of news, so please reply directly to the UUCP address below. I'll summarize
to the net if there's any interest. Thanks.
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!im4u!woton!riddle riddle@woton.UUCP
--- The above is not necessarily the opinion of Shriners Burns Institute.ssl@ptsfa.UUCP (Sam Lok) (11/14/86)
In article <6330@ut-sally.UUCP> riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) writes: >Does anyone out there have any experience with various versions of Informix? >My organization has several medium-to-large databases running under plain old >vanilla Informix which are soon to become a whole lot bigger. Because of a >desire for improved performance and a need to revamp the databases for other >reasons anyway, we are considering starting over with Informix SQL or >Informix ESQL. Are the much-touted advantages of the latter two sufficient >to justify the hassles of changing horses in mid-stream? (We run System V >on a 3B15, a 3B2 and various 3B1s, if it matters.) SQL is great! But Informix/ESQL is not so. There are just too many restriction put on by the ESQL precompiler. Although last time I heard Informix, Inc. now do supply the ALL library with ESQL upon asking! If you don't do much C programming interface, SQL is definitely the way to go! -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Sam Lok San Francisco {ihnp4,pyramid,qantel}!ptsfa!ssl || To err is human, to really foul things Disclaimer!? WHAT disclaimer? || up requires super-user privilege!
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (02/13/87)
Some months back I posted a request for information regarding various
versions of Informix. I didn't get many replies, but I got a couple
of diverging opinions on Informix SQL which might be worth reporting here.
First the good news:
From: im4u!ut-sally!seismo!ubc-vision!van-bc!horace!clh
Subject: Informix
We have a Convergent Technologies MegaFrame (68010-based) and have been
using Informix-SQL for about a year. We used version 1.10 (approx) until
about a month ago, and have now "upgraded" to version 2.00.
We have found a few fairly trivial bugs in 2.00 (some missing messages
from the message file, and similar - nothing affecting answers), and are
generally quite happy with ISQL. The one major weak spot in ISQL so far
is Ace, the report writer. Ace has (in my opinion) two major failings:
1) there are no convenient methods of handling a situation where the
table to be summarized has information that would suggest accumulating
it into a two (or more) dimensional table (eg, no arrays);
2) the language consists of N select statements, the first N-1 of which
accumulate into temporary tables, and the Nth, which is associated
with a mess of output formatting information. This is somewhat
restrictive (for instance, you might wish to do more than select -
eg update some rows), and error conditions that occur during
execution of the select statements don't get reported very well -
we often resort to excerpting the selects and processing them with
the sql interpreter to figure out what's wrong.
On the other hand, the forms facility and the sql facility work extremely
well.
As a suggestion, you might wish to evaluate their Informix-4GL. We're
sort of interested in this (it appears to have a very much better reporting
facility), but haven't any concrete info.
... ubc-vision!van-bc!horace!clh
I also received one reply by phone from a programmer who wishes to remain
nameless for company political reasons. She said that her firm converted a
number of its databases over from Informix version 3.3 to Informix SQL and
that it turned out to be a bad mistake. Here are my notes on her comments
regarding Informix SQL:
It is buggy. SQL version 1.10 was awful, and even in the latest
version, version 2.0, a number of bad bags remain, including things
like a bogus date field which hangs around when it's no longer needed.
>>
It is slow. She did timings of queries under old Informix and both
versions of Informix SQL. She found a 40% drop in performance from
Informix version 3.3 to SQL 1.10, and a 25-30% drop to SQL 2.0.
>>
The conversion job is quite difficult. Converting the databases them-
selves is a two-step process, first from old Informix to SQL 1.10,
then from 1.10 to 3.0. Any C code, screens, etc. require a complete
rewrite.
>>
The "improvements" of Informix SQL over standard Informix are elusive.
For instance, from what she said the security improvements don't mean
much, and on her system it remained necessary to keep the files
writeable by everyone.
I hope this helps someone. As for us at SBI, we've decided to stick with
what we've got.
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Shriners Burns Institute.
--- riddle\@woton.UUCP {ihnp4,harvard,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!woton!riddle