Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!bacchus!husc6!ut-sally!riddle
From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Various versions of Informix
Message-ID: <7149@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Feb-87 17:41:13 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.7149
Posted: Thu Feb 12 17:41:13 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Feb-87 21:07:56 EST
Organization: Shriners Burns Institute, Galveston Unit
Lines: 65
Keywords: Informix

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