Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!teecs!belkin
From: belkin@teecs.UUCP (Hershel Belkin)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: INFORMIX bugs info requested
Message-ID: <1680001@teecs.UUCP>
Date: 4 Oct 89 05:40:57 GMT
References: <1989Sep24.214421.7162@alberta.uucp>
Organization: Litton Systems, Toronto ONT
Lines: 38

I would normally e-mail this, but given the tone of a previous response
I felt an obligation to publicly state my experiences with Informix (and
let me assure you that I have no "connections" with Informix! :-)

We have used Informix-4GL for about a year now, to re-develop an
equipment maintenance and calibration recall/history application
which used to run on a non-unix, higherarchical database system.

Although the development cycle was not without its problems, we found
Informix-4GL (and SQL) to perform very well, both in terms of system
performance, and in terms of ease of development.  I was most impressed
with the fact that we did not need to resort to any code outside of
the 4GL, even though our application is quite complex (a total of about
12,000 lines of 4GL).  I don't know of many RDBM systems which provide such
a comprehensive 4GL.  (We selected Informix over Oracle based on cost,
and depth of 4GL support).  I have found that Informix technical
support is quite good, but responses could be faster.  As part of the
support package, we receive a quarterly (I think) journal containing
known bug work-arounds, technical tips, and other interesting articles.
While I have no reason to doubt that there may have been serious
support issues in the past, my more-recent experiences seem to indicate
that Informix is cleaning up its act.  We have even seen improvements
within the past year.  (BTW, our implementation is not PC-based, but
on a HP9000 unix system)

Without getting carried away here, I will just summarize by saying that
while there are still a number of improvements which I would like
to see (and Informix has expressed interest when I releate these
suggestions...we'll see what future releases show for this :-), I am
basically very happy with the product, and would probably choose it
again if I had to make the choice now.

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------------+
| Hershel Belkin               hp9000/825(HP-UX)| ...!{lsuc}!teecs!belkin |
| Test Equipment Engineering Computing Services |     Phone: 416 246-2647 |
| Litton Systems Canada Limited       (Toronto) |       FAX: 416 246-5233 |
+-----------------------------------------------+-------------------------+