The EDB Postgres Advanced Server is an advanced deployment of the PostgreSQL relational database with greater features and Oracle compatibility, from EnterpriseDB headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts.
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IBM Informix
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Informix is an embedded relational database offering from IBM.
It's great if you are using or wish to use PostgreSQL and need the added performance optimization, security features and developer and DBA tools. If you need compatibility with Oracle it's a must-have. There are many developer features that greatly assist dev teams in integrating and implementing complex middleware. It's great for optimizing complex database queries as well as for scaling. I would recommend Postgres Plus Advanced Server for any software development team that is hitting the limit of what PostgreSQL is capable of and wants to improve performance, security, and gain extra developer tools.
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.
PPAS Oracle compatibility, especially the PL/SQL syntax, has made migrating database-tier code very simple. Most Oracle packages do not need to be changed at all and those that do are generally for simple reasons like a reserved word in PPAS that is allowed in Oracle.
PPAS xDB, the multi-master replication tool, is simple and - most important - does not break with network or other interruptions. We have been able to configure and forget, which our customers could never do with other multi-master tools.
Most people had no idea that PPAS and PostgreSQL have full CRUD support for JSON. They think you need a specialized product and/or that JSON is read-only. Every organization that I have worked with is evaluating adding JSON to their relational model.
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.
Documentation is excellent but spread out across many resources and can take a while to wade through—would benefit from having more intro level, getting started guides for various languages.
Ruby support is excellent but more Ruby examples and beginner-level documentation would be nice.
It is sometimes hard to find a community of users on StackOverflow so a larger community, and a dedicated forum with active members to answer questions and work through issues would be nice.
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.
PPAS proved better for our customer's data-centric apps than Oracle in all but a few edge cases (encryption at rest and multi-TB database-tier backups) because it is simpler to install/maintain, runs nearly all Oracle-syntax SQL as well as ANSI SQL. PPAS has much more JSON capabilities (full CRUD vs. read-only in Oracle), simpler geospatial, simpler / more stable replication and datatypes that match developer expectations, such as BOOLEAN and ENUMs.
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.
Postgres Plus Advanced Server is quite complex and may take longer to implement certain things than simply using PostgreSQL depending on developer familiarity with the platform.
Getting up to speed can be daunting so again, there is an upfront cost in time spent learning the platform, besides the potential for extra time spent on a feature-by-feature basis.
The cost of Postgres Plus Advanced Server should be weighed against simply using PostgreSQL to decide which is the best solution for your business needs.
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
