Hi All
New to the dBforums.

I am in the process of gathering information on "Informix on Windows 2000 Platform" for my company. Any insights, thoughts, concerns, issues, downfalls - can you please inform me? All your information will be much appreciated.

Hi,

Visit

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/

Regards,

lloyd

Lloyd: Thank you!

I have already visited and gathered some pertinent information from the IBM site as well I have gathered some good points from the dBforums.

I guess what I would like to know more of are the concerns or issues if we decide to go with having Informix on a Windows 2000 platform. What are the advantages, or the downfalls of this option....


Thank you, Aengel

Hi Aengel,

I would alway prefer Informix on Unix as its much more stable.

Regards,

Lloyd

Lloyd
Our sentiments exactly.

Are you aware of any fall backs?

Aengel,

The only problem with windows is it can crash unexpectidly, but unix is very very stable. Moreover from my past experience managing the server is much easier on Unix.

Regards,

Lloyd

Yes, I agree with you Lloyd 100%! It is much better to have Informix on Unix or AIX - the OS is more stable and it's easier to maintain. Furthermore if you want to add modules like Datablade modules, it's easier to do it on Unix/AIX platform rather than Windows.

Informix is normally used for large scale database. And normally for large database, we do not use Windows platform.

I am currently administering Informix on Windows and have done the same on Unix in the past. I prefer Unix. Windows limits the tuning of the engine. Here are some of them off the top of my head.

You can not use a shm connection.
You can have only 1 poll thread.
All disk access goes through the OS, so using Raw Disk Space is useless.
You can only use a max of 2 GB RAM. There is an exception that allow 3 GB but I have not tested that.
Default is not to automatically backup log files on completion, i.e. the script (log_full.bat) does not exist. You can get it though and get this to work without much problem. You just have to know about it.
Onbar has problems with dbspaces over 10 GB. (Actual restore issue here just over a year ago)

Those are the initial thoughts. Unix is much more stable.

ljarratt

Hi,

After reviewing some answers I also want to put in some ideas.

One of the main problems is that there is a lot of windows-hate among some unix guru's. I'm not saying the earlier given answers are an example of this, don't get me wrong. Bit this is just a general conclusion.

I'll first want to respond on some earlier given suggestions:

Suggestion(S): Windows vcan only use 2GB of RAM (with some 3GB execption)
Answers (A): Correct, but this is not a Windows or Unix feature, just a 32-bit or 64-bit questions. 32-bit Unix versions have the same limitation.

S: Cannot use raw-devices
A: Not really true. You can use unformatted, partitioned drives. Is this a lot faster? No, because windows is always using kernel I/O (KAIO).

S: Windows is unstable
A: Windows is not really unstable, how people manage it makes it much more unstable. Fo example why install office on a IDS server??? Ok, unix is a more proven solution, but not always better

S: Windows more difficult to tune
A: Globally the same, windows itself is not that easy to tune, but why do you want to if is performs good. Take a look at www.tpc.prg and you will see that a lot of benchmarks work great under windows.

S: Easier to maintain
A: Ok, unix is much more scriptable. I miss this in Windows.

If I need to choose between a Windows and an Unix box. I would choose.... ......... depending on the situation Windows, Linux or Unix

Windows: More difficult to administer, cheap, known system
Unix: great scalability, scripting, stable, but expensive hardware
Linux: Nice, cheap hardware, scripting and stable

I hope, I have not offended anayone. Of this is the case, I apologise right now...


Greetz,

Rob Prop

Hi,

My vote goes to Unix/Linux OS platforms, based on some ideals / criterion as below:

1. Ability to configure / customise the kernel using tunable parameters.
2. Owns Endurance to withstand high load & user activity and sustain reasonable degree of decency in performance.
3. Better functionality, *IX can do anything that NT can do and more.
4. Offers better reliability & scalability
5. Offers better Internet/Intranet networking features
6. Offers easier system management
7. Offers better Security, fewer Exploits, less virus infestation
8. Excellent scripting languages support (Bourne Shell, Korn Shell, C Shell, Bash Shell, Perl, etc.)
and more ...

Find-out more on why *ix is better than others.
http://kirch.net/unix-nt/
http://hazard.com/linux/10.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articl...lturalism.html
http://bsd.slashdot.org/bsd/02/11/21....shtml?tid=109
http://www.astreet.com/article.php?sid=221
http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/33089.html
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Ind...leID=4500&pg=1
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/32850.htm

Regards,
Shriyan