Db2 vs. IBM Informix

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Db2
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
DB2 is a family of relational database software solutions offered by IBM. It includes standard Db2 and Db2 Warehouse editions, either deployable on-cloud, or on-premise.
$0
IBM Informix
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Informix is an embedded relational database offering from IBM.N/A
Pricing
Db2IBM Informix
Editions & Modules
Db2 on Cloud Lite
$0
Db2 on Cloud Standard
$99
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex One
$898
per month
Db2 on Cloud Enterprise
$946
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex for AWS
2,957
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex
$3,451
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex Performance
13,651
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex Performance for AWS
13,651
per month
Db2 Standard Edition
Contact us
Db2 Advanced Edition
Contact us
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Db2IBM Informix
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Db2IBM Informix
Considered Both Products
Db2
Chose Db2
Db2 is much more scalable and available then other Databases such as MariaDB, Ingres, Sysbase, Informix etc Oracle is good but comes close to Db2.
Db2 is multi platofrom and when it comes to mainframe there is no other choice then Db2 for the database. Tools available for Db2 …
IBM Informix
Chose IBM Informix
You could use any other relational database, but they will be either expensive to maintain or won't scale as much.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Db2IBM Informix
Small Businesses
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SQLite
SQLite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SQLite
SQLite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SQLite
SQLite
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Db2IBM Informix
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(75 ratings)
9.1
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(12 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.8
(52 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.7
(52 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Db2IBM Informix
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
I could think of a couple but the obvious is in Fintech and Retail, because of the amount of transactional and event level data for global operations. It is imperative to have a solution that can handle such large scale date, in real-time and batch delivery for inbound and outbound delivery, and ultimately ensuring that workload management is supported in some cases for around the clock SLAs.
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IBM
IBM Informix creates an effective and secure channel for easy and quick data management and transfer across other major Cloud platforms and other data storage systems. The analytical ability is also the best and most effective visual functionalities and the encryption and the data archiving functionalities are great and easy on reporting.
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Pros
IBM
  • DB2 maintains itself very well. The Task Scheduler component of DB2 allows for statistics gathering and reorganization of indexes and tables without user interaction or without specific knowledge of cron or Windows Task Scheduler / Scheduled jobs.
  • Its use of ASYNC, NEARSYNC, and SYNC HADR (High Availability Disaster Recovery ) models gives you a range of options for maintaining a very high uptime ratio. Failover from PRIMARY to SECONDARY becomes very easy with just a single command or windowed mouse click.
  • Task Scheduler ( DB2 9.7 and earlier ) allows for jobs to be run within other jobs, and exit and error codes can define what other jobs are run. This allows for ease of maintenance without third party softwares.
  • Tablespace usage and automatic storage help keep your data segmented while at rest, making partitioning easier.
  • Ability to run commands via CLI (Command Line Interface) or via Control Center / Data Studio ( DB2 10.x+) makes administration a breeze.
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IBM
  • Industry leading OLTP performance.
  • Excellent Data Warehouse performance from the basic engine. Outstanding Data Warehouse performance from the Informix Warehouse Accelerator module.
  • Best embedability among major RDBMS systems.
  • Scalable from the smallest Raspberry PI up to the largest monolithic systems and out to dozens of distributed nodes.
  • Hybrid data capabilities to merge relational data with time seriesv, geospacial data, JSON data and other non-traditional data types with performance comparable or better than systems dedicated to those data types.
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Cons
IBM
  • The relational model requires a rigid schema that does not necessarily fit with some types of modern development.
  • Proprietary database, requires a lot of Hardware for its good performance and its costs are high.
  • As data grows in production environment, it becomes slow.
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IBM
  • It is very difficult to find a missing functionality in Informix, technically is great. I will again criticize the business side and how it has been managed over the past, I hope this could be improved with HCL's help. I know they are working hard, but we need to start letting the world know and revert their concept about its existence and that it is one of the best competitors within the data treatment, in the market. We need to start telling the world about success cases and stories showing this and backing up its strong technology.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
The DB2 database is a solid option for our school. We have been on this journey now for 3-4 years so we are still adapting to what it can do. We will renew our use of DB2 because we don’t see. Major need to change. Also, changing a main database in a school environment is a major project, so we’ll avoid that if possible.
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IBM
Informix is the best RDBMS on the market. Period.
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Usability
IBM
You have to be well versed in using the technology, not only from a GUI interface but from a command line interface to successfully use this software to its fullest.
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IBM
Server management is easy enough to be able to embed the engine in a device and let it run for years without maintenance.
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Reliability and Availability
IBM
I have never had DB2 go down unexpectedly. It just works solidly every day. When I look at the logs, sometimes DB2 has figured out there was a need to build an index. Instead of waiting for me to do it, the database automatically created the index for me. At my current company, we have had zero issues for the past 8 years. We have upgrade the server 3 times and upgraded the OS each time and the only thing we saw was that DB2 got better and faster. It is simply amazing.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Performance
IBM
The performances are exceptional if you take care to maintain the database. It is a very powerful tool and at the same time very easy to use. In our installation, we expect a DB machine on the mainframe with access to the database through ODBC connectors directly from branch servers, with fabulous end users experience.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
Easily the best product support team. :) Whenever we have questions, they have answered those in a timely manner and we like how they go above and beyond to help.
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IBM
The Informix product support team has won awards and is appreciated by the entire Informix user community.
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In-Person Training
IBM
the material was very clear and all subjects have been handled
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM
db2 work well with the application, also the replication tool can keep it up
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
IBM
DB2 was more scalable and easily configurable than other products we evaluated and short listed in terms of functionality and pricing. IBM also had a good demo on premise and provided us a sandbox experience to test out and play with the product and DB2 at that time came out better than other similar products.
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IBM
IBM Informix creates effective solutions for big data extraction and data transportation functionalities across the entire Cloud services and the Automation ability is the best. The security that IBM Informix provides for all our business data and other project information and contacts is effective and the reports are very clean and easy to understand.
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Scalability
IBM
By
using DB2 only to support my IzPCA activities, my knowledge here
is somewhat limited.

Anyway,
from what I was able to understand, DB2 is extremely scallable.

Maybe the information below could serve as an example of scalability.
Customer have an huge mainframe environment, 13x z15 CECs, around
80 LPARs, and maybe more than 50 Sysplexes (I am not totally sure about this
last figure...)

Today
we have 7 IzPCA
databases, each one in a distinct Syplex.

Plans
are underway to have, at the end, an small LPAR, with only one DB2 sub-system,
and with only one database, then transmit the data from a lot of other LPARs,
and then process all the data in this only one database.



The
IzPCA collect process (read the data received, manipulate it, and insert rows
in the tables) today is a huge process, demanding many elapsed
hours, and lots of CPU.

Almost
100% of the tables are PBR type, insert jobs run in parallel, but in 4 of the 7
database, it is a really a huge and long process.



Combining
the INSERTs loads from the 7 databases in only one will be impossible.......,,,,



But,
IzPCA recently introduced a new feature, called "Continuous
Collector"
.
By
using that feature, small amounts of data will be transmited to the central
LPAR at every 5 minutes (or even less), processed immediately,in
a short period of time, and with small use of CPU,
instead of one or two transmissions by day, of very large amounts of data and
the corresponding collect jobs occurring only once or twice a day, with long
elapsed times, and huge comsumption of CPU



I
suspect the total CPU seconds consumed will be more or less the same in
both cases, but in the new method it will occur in small bursts
many times a day!!
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • Fast response time by processing optimization and cost reduction by reduced CPU utilization. Nowadays, good performance is a necessary condition for the survival of a company and its sustained growth
  • SQL enhancements are targeted to improve performance, simplify current and new applications, and reduce the development cycle time to market.
  • A CPU reduction at peak times can immediately reduce our TCO by reducing software costs related to CPU utilization.
  • Impressive reductions in memory requirements, which used to limit the concurrent database activity
  • Out-of-the-box savings without changing the database or application
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IBM
  • Although I do not own nor have visibility on my company's figures:
  • Informix generates consistent savings on DBA staffing, no need for many DBAs as other DBMS require.
  • The replication architecture allowed consistent savings in the infrastructure as well as developments and maintenance, the job is already done, no need to develop complex and costly solutions, it's just a matter of configuring it.
  • The advantages of hybrid development (i.e mixing SQL and NoSQL in the same database) is not just a marketing hype: it allowed us to solve with a brilliant solution, in one afternoon of coding, a functional problem we have been having for more than 10 years!
  • The biggest drawback is that IBM pricing may be constraining, it has too important gaps between the mid range and highrange in terms of pricing
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