I think Neil has hit the nail on the head. The main difference
between ontape and onbar is the integration of onbar into the
enterprise storage manager.
This will never be a simple operation.
Informix provides a simple storage manager (Informix Storage Manager)
which provides support for multiple devices, parallel backups and
restores.

The major problems I have experienced when working with other storage
managers is understanding the terminology of the storage manager,
especially when the storage manager also supports other Database
products. It is difficult to back up servers and find that the
storage manager calls them databases for example.

I would suggest that we should add this topic to the FAQ but I have
found that the Informix backup and restore Guide, and Informix Storage
Manager Guide do adequately describe these issues.

regards

malcolm

"Neil Truby" <neil.truby@ardenta.com> wrote in message news:<c5mr7m$3ikn0$1@ID-162943.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> "McCabe-Reed, Barbara SIK" <BReed@sikorsky.com> wrote in message
> news:c5modn$rtb$1@terabinaries.xmission.com...
> >
> > Onbar is the best backup utility I have used with backing up and restoring
> > databases.
>
> You haven't used onarchive then? ;-)
> Seriously, its quality depends to some extent on the integration with the
> storage manager. The Omniback/Data Protector integration for Informix is
> crap.