stefan@wheaton.UUCP (Stefan Brandle ) (05/08/90)
Thanks to those who replied to the question about whether it would be best to
go to Ultrix 4.0 when using Informix vs. starting at 3.1X and going to 4.0
later.
The general points raised/issues are:
1) DEC is going to spend much more time fixing problems in 4.X than 3.X, and
3.X has a number of problems.
2) It's always dangerous to move to anything `hot-off-the-press' when dealing
with a serious production issue. In our case, we're talking about what might
be our most important `online' database.
3) Find out what Informix thinks.
#1 argues for V4.0; #2 argues against it. #3 is--of course--of supreme
importance. The answer to #3 started out being that Informix sales said it
didn't work. I was rather suspicious, so asked for clarification. "Do you
mean it literally doesn't work, or that you're unwilling to stand behind it
yet, or that you don't know?" I was especially suspicious since DEC just
started selling Uniplex, claims it runs well under 4.0, and Uniplex (Base I)
includes Informix runtime. (However, that doesn't prove beyond a shadow of a
doubt that it does work--there might be gremlins just waiting!)
Informix sales came back with the answer that Informix has seen the database
working under 4.0, but consider it a beta product still (which I guess isn't
too far off) and so Informix is officially unwilling to support 4.0. Meaning,
if we hit a serious problem of any sort, they could opt to shrug their
shoulders and say unsympathetic things like "We told you so.", rather than the
"Oops, I guess we have something we need to fix." which is what I would want to
hear.
The general indications are the 4.0 hasn't changed too much from a general
compatibility perspective, and there may well be no problems. However, picture
me ordering 4.0, starting to use it, getting bitten by some bug, and either
down-grading to 3.1X or stalling while I wait for DEC to come up with a
patch/solution, and having a whole bunch of frustrated users threatening to
dump my core and trample all over it with a proprietary, documentationless
debugger.
So, I'm going for 3.1X and hoping that I don't get bit by any of those
memory/etc problems some others got nailed with. Informix says they'll tell me
when they officially support 4.0.
Hope this is of help/interest to some of you. Once again, thanks to those who
took the time to answer.
Stefan Brandle
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