IDS Forum

Re: Informix/Oracle

Posted By: Art Kagel
Date: Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:13 a.m.

In Response To: Informix/Oracle (FLIP VAN WYNGAARDT)

Flip:

Whoa! I've heard of salespeople streching the truth, but this is a bald
faced lie! Or more than one actually. Either the salesman is lying to you
or his management lied to him! I'm sure someone from IBM will join this
thread, but for now here is the truth as I know it:

- IBM has a roadmap for Informix going out to 2020 and beyond. It is

open ended and there is no plan to stop selling or to stop developing,

maintaining, and enhancing Informix.

- Informix is not stagnant. In the 13+ years that IBM has owned the

product it has made more enhancements and improvements to the product and

implemented more new features than Informix Corp. did in the 20+ years that

it existed.

- As for High Availability: Informix has the strongest suite of high

availability and data replication features in the industry, bar none! Not

Oracle, not DB2, not any other product is better at this one mission

critical feature than Informix. Informix is certified to five 9's of

availability, that's 99.999% uptime or better! I know customer sites that

have had no unplanned downtime in years! Only with Informix can you

perform a rolling upgrade of your entire grid of servers without any

downtime for your users. Here's a link to a recent study on this very

subject published by Database Trends and Applications:

http://www.dbta.com/DBTA-Downloads/WhitePapers/Comparing-IBM-Informix-and-Oracle-Database-for-High-Availability-and-Data-Replication-an-ITG-Manage-4751.aspx

The introduction to the article says:

IBM Informix is the clear choice over Oracle Database for High

Availability and Data Replication Organizations with requirements for data

replication and high availability are frequently met with daunting costs,

especially if they are considering Oracle database and RAC. They should be

aware that there is an alternative. IBM Informix offers enterprise-class

database availability in a significantly less complex, less expensive

manner for both distributed and centralized deployments.

- Most of Oracle's High Availability is provided by extra cost 3rd party

products and products that were formerly 3rd party which it bought outright

and now sells to its customers at additional cost. Even Oracle's Real

Application Clusters (RAC) feature is an extra cost option that required

additional software to be run on your servers and specialized high speed

network backbones for efficiency. Oracle has no native data replication

feature.

- All of Informix's high availability options are not only included in

the product at no additional cost, but are native and part of the database

engine itself and do not require any additional software to be run. This

includes:

- HDR - High Availability Data Replication: a configurable

synchronous, near synchronous, or asynchronous replication
system when you

can have a secondary server with fast reliable connectivity to
the primary

server. This uses standard networking hardware and protocols. Expensive

specialized high speed backbones (like Infiniband) are not required. You

can have one HDR secondary for each primary server. The
equivalent feature

in Oracle is extra cost from a 3rd party.

- RSS - Remote Secondary Server: a highly configurable asynchronous

or delayed synchronous replicated secondary server feature for situations

when the secondary is farther from the primary or when network
connectivity

is slower or less reliable than HDR requires. The delayed
synchronization

feature is useful for protecting data from fumble fingered users making

recovery of accidentally modified or deleted data simpler. This
is a unique

Informix feature. You can have as many RSS secondary servers as needed.

There is not direct equivalent for Oracle.

- SDS - Shared Disk Secondary Server: this is a shared disk or

clustered solution to high availability and load distribution
and scale-up.

This is the equivalent of Oracle's RAC product but at no
additional cost.

Where RAC rarely scales beyond three or four co-servers,
Informix SDS will

scale to dozens or more secondary servers and does not require any

specialized networking hardware. You can bring up an SDS secondary to

handle unusual loads in seconds and Informix's Connection Manager will

immediately begin routing new user connections to the new secondary.

- ER - Enterprise Replication: this is a fully configurable feature

that provides data replication at the server, database, table or
even down

to the row level. You can configure ER to gather data transactions from

smaller local servers consolidating it into a central super server

containing all of the data. You can configure ER to distribute

transactions from a central super server to local servers containing

subsets of the data. You can configure ER to maintain a massive grid of

hundreds of geographically distributed servers all in near sychronization

across the world.

- Flexible Grid: an extension to ER added by IBM in the last 5 years

that allows Database Administrators to manage a world spanning
grid of ER,

HDR, RSS, and SDS servers from a single location. DBAs can
execute server

level commands such as adding storage to any or all servers in the grid,

execute DDL like creating or altering tables in any, some, or all of the

servers in the grid.

- Grid Query: is a capability that IBM implemented just over a year

ago that allows you to distribute your database across an entire Flexible

Grid comprised of dozens or hundreds of server such that users can query

the the entire grid as a single massively distributed database with a

single simple query. A database that was originally central to a single

server can be reconfigured to be distributed and the applications that

access the data do not have to be modified to continue to work and return

the expected data. This feature eliminates the need to use ER
to maintain

a massive central server in a globally distributed enterprise.

- CM -Connection Manager: is an optional connection director and/or

router that is included with Informix at no additional cost. You can run

and manage your entire HA universe of Informix servers without it or turn

it on for extra features. Connection Manager is used for load balancing

between multiple primary and secondary servers and to intelligently

redirect users to surviving servers if one or more nodes fail.
CM can also

manage server fail over assigning which secondary server will
take over as

primary if a primary server goes offline. There is no equivalent feature

or functionality in Oracle.

- Uninterruptable Transactions: A feature of Informix HDR, SDS, and

RSS server clusters that guarantees that transactions begun by client

applications connected to a secondary server (whether HDR, RSS, or SDS)

will complete successfully without any application intervention if the

primary server should go offline or crash. Once one of the secondary

servers takes over as the new primary server (CM selects the new primary

based on your configurated SLAs) all outstanding transactions
continue with

only a short delay. There is no equivalent Oracle feature (Oracle is

capable of logging transactions locally on a cluster member and replaying

that log from the beginning if a server fails, but this can be a lengthy

process for larger transactions and is so impractical in an OLTP

environment that Oracle's literature no longer mentions the option).

- All of these HA features can be used independently or together to

build a truly available system. Your cluster or Grid can be comprised of

Primary servers each backed up by one or more HDR, RSS, and/or SDS

secondary servers insuring that data is 100% available 100% of the time.

No other database system on the market can give you this
confidence or real

reliability.

Take that Oracle!

Art

Art S. Kagel, Principal Consultant
ASK Database Management

Blog: http://informix-myview.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that my own opinions are my own opinions
and do not reflect on the IIUG, nor any other organization with which I am
associated either explicitly, implicitly, or by inference. Neither do
those opinions reflect those of other individuals affiliated with any
entity with which I am affiliated nor those of the entities themselves.

On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 3:13 AM, FLIP VAN WYNGAARDT <flipv@raf.co.za> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I received the following comments from an Oracle Sales person:
>
> "Please note the below note to add in your motivation:
>
> IBM does not have a road map for Informix, making it a stagnant product and
> there is a possibility of little to zero support for Informix.
>
> High availability is an issue for Informix, therefore if RAF regards the
> Informix DB as mission critical then they might want to have it available
> 24/7.
>
> The abovementioned points are usually the reason why a customer would
> consider
> moving to Oracle database"
>
> Please give me your comments on this statement.
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> *******************************************************************************
> Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.
>
>

--001a11c221aebf17e805024f8f2a

Messages In This Thread

• Informix/Oracle
  FLIP VAN WYNGAARDT -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 3:13 a.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    Madison Pruet -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 5:11 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      Art Kagel -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:19 a.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    Lloyd S -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 6:30 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      Malc P -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:03 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      Jerry Keesee -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:17 a.m.
      • Re: Informix/Oracle
        Jack Parker -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:20 a.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    Marco Greco -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 6:52 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      FLIP VAN WYNGAARDT -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 8:01 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      ALAN DENNEY -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 8:28 p.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    Art Kagel -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:13 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      BENJAMIN THOMPSON -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:23 a.m.
      • Re: Informix/Oracle
        Art Kagel -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:32 a.m.
        • Re: Informix/Oracle
          BENJAMIN THOMPSON -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:54 a.m.
          • Re: Informix/Oracle
            Art Kagel -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 8:10 a.m.
      • Re: Informix/Oracle
        Fernando Nunes -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:35 a.m.
        • Re: Informix/Oracle
          Fernando Nunes -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 9:59 a.m.
          • Re: Informix/Oracle
            Jack Parker -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 10:11 a.m.
        • Re: Informix/Oracle
          david@smooth1.co.uk -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 4:47 p.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    Fernando Nunes -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:13 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      Fernando Nunes -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:20 a.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    BENJAMIN THOMPSON -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 7:15 a.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    Ruben Dutan -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 8:58 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      Art Kagel -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 9:19 a.m.
  • RE: Informix/Oracle
    Andrew Ford -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 11:20 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      Marcus Haarmann -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 11:33 a.m.
    • Re: Informix/Oracle
      Paul Watson -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 11:48 a.m.
      • Re: Informix/Oracle
        Fernando Nunes -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 12:12 p.m.
        • RE: Informix/Oracle
          Paul Watson -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 12:15 p.m.
        • RE: Informix/Oracle
          Andrew Ford -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 12:17 p.m.
    • RE: Informix/Oracle
      John Fahey -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 8:25 p.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    Martin Fuerderer -- Friday, 5 September 2014, at 1:23 p.m.
  • Re: Informix/Oracle
    NORMA JEAN SEBASTIAN -- Saturday, 6 September 2014, at 5:36 a.m.
  • RE: Informix/Oracle
    Andrew Ford -- Wednesday, 17 September 2014, at 3:03 p.m.

IDS Forum is maintained by Administrator with WebBBS 5.12.