Member Avatar for rolandsmokit

Imagine my surprise when I logged onto Daniweb and saw a scrolling advert for IBMs Informix database.

I've been using Informix for years and it is an incredibly elegant bit of code, and the object extensions you can use are totally unique.

I'd always thought of Informix as a secret cult that those of us " in the know" used as a secret weapon to do databasey things the other developers cant :-) , looks like IBM are advertising it now so my competitive advantage is not going to last long :-(

Anyone else out there experienced Informix ? Wanna start a thread here on Daniweb about the tricks of the trade ? Maybe introduce some of the younger developers to our cult ?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by \007

Dani AI

Generated

Nice thread — spotting the ad kicked off a useful exchange. Several members have already chimed in with experience and enthusiasm (, , , ) while asked the practical question many newcomers have: how different is Informix from Oracle and how do you evaluate it? Below are concise, hands-on next steps and a few immediately useful commands and resources to turn the enthusiasm here into a safe, repeatable proof-of-concept.

Short POC checklist (good for an afternoon lab)

  1. Inventory what your apps use (stored procs, proprietary SQL, advanced datatypes, scheduled jobs, drivers).
  2. Pick a representative workload (real queries, joins, batch jobs) and a small data sample.
  3. Install a no-cost developer instance and test connectivity and simple migrations.
  4. Use a migration methodology and toolset (schema, data, procedures) and run functional + performance comparisons.
  5. Validate backups, restores, and HA behavior before any cutover decision.
    The IBM Redbook “Migrating from Oracle … to Informix” is a practical how-to for this approach. (redbooks.ibm.com)

Quick, actionable commands you can try in a lab

# Java driver + URL (example)
Driver: com.informix.jdbc.IfxDriver
URL: jdbc:informix-sqli://HOST:PORT/DBNAME:INFORMIXSERVER=server

# Take a whole-system backup
onbar -b -w

# Refresh optimizer stats for a table
UPDATE STATISTICS MEDIUM FOR TABLE mytable;

# Inspect active sessions
onstat -g ses

Use the official JDBC examples and driver docs for connectivity, ON‑Bar for backups, UPDATE STATISTICS to keep the optimizer accurate, and onstat for runtime troubleshooting. (ibm.com)

Where to go next (authoritative reads and community)

If the thread drifts into product-praise-only territory (as suggested), steer it back toward concrete problems: POC results, specific queries, explain plans, and real-world restore/HA tests. Those are the items that make a technical choice defensible rather than merely opinion.

Recommended Answers

All 11 Replies

Member Avatar for goatbadger

I've been using Informix for years too and think it's really great IBM are advertising it again. It would brilliant to see more active discussions here. The product is going from strength to strength - there's some great new features V11.70, hopefully this is the start of the Informix revolution!

Member Avatar for douglawry

Totally agree. No other database product has features like Time Series, which is now part of the standard product. Since the recent pricing revamp, it's also massively cheaper and some editions are free. There is no longer any excuse for using expensive slow bloatware like Oracle!

Member Avatar for ifpzr

It's always been brilliantly easy to install, configure and maintain, as well as the fastest and most reliable database you can get, and now IBM are piling in more and more functionality all the time - Mach 11, Flexible Grid, Storage Provisioning and so on. Can't understand why anyone would use anything but Informix!

Member Avatar for AdeelM

At my place of work, we strictly use Oracle. I've been a software developer for 5 years now after graduating with my B.S. and have wrote countless applications that interface with an Oracle 9i and 10g database. I'm wondering what the difference between IBM's Informix and Oracle 10g are? What would be the advantage of using Informix over Oracle be?

Member Avatar for douglawry

You can get Informix to perform better on less hardware. For example, each database session starts a separate operating system process in Oracle, whereas this is handled by a resident multi-threaded process pool in Informix. The list is long: give me some hints what you would like to do.

Member Avatar for rolandsmokit

Interesting point on the hardware, I was reading the other day that the electricity costs of running a server for 3 years are greater than the purchase price of the tin ! The lighter the box the better all round, and brownie points from the greens !

Member Avatar for ifpzr

And because of the multi-threaded approach, Informix is *very* scalable - doesn't matter how much hardware you throw at it, it'll make good use of it.

Member Avatar for begooden

Hi Roland,

I work with Informix databases since 1986. I have been employed by Informix Software during 11 years, and stupidly left for another company, but came back to this technology 8years after, and sincerely I do not regreat at all. Informix Dynamic server has definately the best architecture design among all databases, and IBM is now seriously committed in promoting this product. The multi threaded architecture has started in 1993, and the ORDBMS techno was included in 1998. These are now many years on the many with a very scalable architecture + real multimedia (and other) data. It is also extremely robust ( it is not rare to see 3 or 4 years uptime at big customers).

Add to this the Informix Warehouse Accelerator, which provides you up to 100 times performance improvement in datawarehouse queries on a linux platform, you definately have a major contributor in the datawarehouse playground.

Member Avatar for \007

This thread should be removed.

Member Avatar for happygeek

Why's that then?

Member Avatar for \007

A number of low post users doing nothing but 'praising' this product. The whole thread is essentially spam/advertising. As if the informix ad wasn't bad enough.

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