Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
>>>>IBM desires to compete in the SMB and "White Space" market places.
>>>>In these areas, the "Infobahn" is ineffective. It fails to penetrate
>>>>the untapped customer base or potential customer base.
>>>
>>>And that is problem No 1.
>>>Problem No 2 is that the credible "independent" technology forcasters
>>>even see Informix on the It landscape. Perhaps that is because Janet
>>>P's debranding of Informix into DB2 was very effective. Or perhaps it
>>>is just because the IBM Information Management marketing people just
>>>cant bear to say the "Informix" word in public.
>>>Problem No 3 is that, because of problem No's 1 and 2, there is no new
>>>generation of Informix DBA's or developers coming along. I may be
>>>wrong, (often am) but I doubt that even IT companies in India or China,
>>>the great global outsource engines, are making an investment in
>>>Informix. Now, I know that IBM are hoping that EGL will become the
>>>Informix 4GL replacement but I don't even think IBM takes EGL seriously
>>>at the moment.>
>>>Michael. I agree with your musings.
>>
>>What makes Informix compelling instead of Oracle, IBM-DB2
>
>
> Not much, IMHO. It may be 'nicer' in a variety of technical ways, but
> they probably only matter to technical people. We use Informix because
> we choose it a long time ago, today I would choose DB2.
>
>
>>MS-SQL-Server,
>
>
> That it runs on platforms other than Windows.
>
>

MS-SQL-Server runs only on Windows--unless of course you put it on
Windows running as a virtual machine on a Linux or UNIX machine. Then
I guess you could say it's technically running on something besides
Windows, but it'd still be on Windows.

>>or MySQL?
>
>
> Are you serious?! Anyone who compares MySQL to DB2/Oracle/Informix
> either doesn't know what they are talking about, thinks a PHP script is
> a 'real application', or has simply licked too many mushrooms. The
> reasons to use DB2/Oracle/Informix over something like MySQL would be
> *WAY* too long to type (data integrity being the first one).
>

Informix has Standard Engine, which compares with MySQL in terms of
an ISAM product, so, yes, I'm serious, and I **do** know what I'm
talking about. ( Here's a napkin you spilled your drink on you shirt )
Almost all the vendors make a series of products besides their large
'enterprise' products.

As to extrapolating the viability of PHP, this is another topic, I was
only talking about database products. FWIW PHP is a very popular and
useful application language, used by a lot of very successful companies
for a variety of applications. You might find this link useful in
forming your future opinions about PHP:

http://www.securityspace.com/s_surve...pachemods.html

PHP is a real application product, and the billing rates are comparable
if not better than a lot of other application environments. Really a
great application tool for the web.

>
>>Why would management pay for Informix instead of something else?
>
>
> Because you already have it; management thinks in terms of risk.
> Stinking with what you've got is low risk.
>

So you're suggesting that your company is not interested in a new
license, only renewing existing support?

> Or you are choosing an APPLICATION that uses Informix, and yes there are
> still lots of them out there. My employer went shopping for a new ERP
> system, and the one that ranked the highest.... recommends Informix (and
> we didn't even pre-screen based on RDBMS backend). And applications are
> the reason you have an RDBMS in the first place.
>

Good point(s).