Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!agate!shelby!decwrl!nsc!icldata!altos86!jon
From: jon@altos86.UUCP (Jonathan Ma)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: INFORMIX benchmarks
Message-ID: <1125@altos86.UUCP>
Date: 19 May 89 18:22:24 GMT
References: <124@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk>
Reply-To: jon@altos86.UUCP (Jonathan Ma)
Organization: Altos Computer Systems, San Jose, CA
Lines: 36

In article <124@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> jnw@cs.strath.ac.uk (John Wilson) writes:
>I am just about to buy INFORMIX RDBMS, 4GL etc.
>
	This is so tempting, got to put in my 2 cents.
>It fits the bill in most respects but I have just heard that it is 
>VERY SLOW. Apparently it spends a lot of time doing disk transfers
>when it should be doing something else.
>
	Funny, it always seems to rain at the parade! Stop panicking.
	There's INFORMIX-TURBO, which uses raw disks and shared memory,
	I'd recommend you to consider it.  The performance is simply far
	better than the standard back-end, not to mention the reliability,
	etc.
>I have sent off for OLTP benchmarks but feel that they may not provide
>a straight answer.
>
	I've used TP1, published by UNIFY, to test INFORMIX-TURBO.  The
	result is extremely good (sorry, I can't disclose the numbers).
	It's better than Oracle 5.1 running on the same platform.
>Has anyone heard similar reports or had bad experiences with INFORMIX ?
>
	Boy, grow up, will you?  I'm not defending INFORMIX or anybody.
	Nor am I trying to flame you or anybody.

	Your question doesn't make any sense. I'm sure everyone had bad
	experience with one product or another at some point.  

	You will have to ask yourself: what's the most important factors
	(criteria) in selecting a DBMS?  I once took a DBMS class from
	Management Information System (MIS) department about two years
	ago, we had a list of 50 criteria in selecting DBMSs.  I believe
	none of the commercial DBMS vendors can meet all the criteria.
	In my opinion, all of them are alike.  Searching for bug-free,
	excellent support, free upgrades, and super-speed software is
	just an impossible dream.
>John Wilson.