Informix, still the RDBMS of choice among those who have used it.
March 14, 2018

Informix, still the RDBMS of choice among those who have used it.

Art S. Kagel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Informix

I support business and government organizations that use Informix worldwide. Clients use Informix for OLTP applications as well as Data Warehouse and Decision Support analytics. Database sizes range from several GB to tens of TB. Industries include retail, wholesale, electric utilities, online gaming, online gambling, information processing, financial records management and financial transactions, court record keeping, government taxation units, etc. For most of these organizations Informix manages and secures mission-critical data.
  • 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.
  • Honestly, not much. IBM and HCL have excellent product feature feedback mechanisms with an online system for users to offer feature improvements and suggestions. Many are incorporated in new releases. The latest includes two such user suggested features for example.
  • Informix typically requires fewer DBAs and less time spent by DBA staff on operational and maintenance operations permitting them to concentrate on other issues and reducing ROI.
I have participated in evaluations of Informix versus most of its competing RDBMS engines. In all of those evaluations, when performance, ease of maintenance, ROI, and effort required to train staff to proficiency are the criteria of decision, Informix has always been the choice.
  • Like most RDBMS servers, Informix is strong in OLTP so it is a good choice for any high volume transaction systems including retail, banking, online gambling, etc.
  • Because its memory and storage footprints are relatively small and its installation footprint can be adjusted by deselecting unneeded features during installation, and also in large part to the autonomic tuning features of Informix, it is ideal for embedded systems and is used as the embedded database engine for several mainstream products in telecommunications, environmental management, and similar systems.
  • Its ability to integrate timeseries data with relational data make it ideal for monitoring and for the analytical processing of time oriented data such as utility supply, weather tracking, logistics and warehouse management, etc.
  • Informix's support for JSON/BSON data types and for the MongoDB API and wire listener protocol, in addition to the extensions Informix adds to the MongoDB API to support relational data, generic SQL statements, and multi-step transactions make it an ideal drop in replacement for MongoDB and other document oriented databases when application requirements exceed the capabilities and performance characteristics of these NoSQL database systems.
  • The Informix Warehouse Accelerator (IWA) feature of the Informix Advanced Enterprise Edition can accelerate data warehouse queries several hundred times over the speed of the base Informix and other RDBMS servers. In addition, IWA provides this acceleration with no modifications to applications and analytical tools and without the need to create additional indexes, cubes, or pre-calculated summary tables. Further, queries accelerated with IWA do not affect the performance of simpler queries running in the base Informix engine allowing IWA to provide an analytical query engine on top of a operational data store without complex ETL/ELT data migrations/conversions.

Using IBM Informix

1 - President and Principal Consultant
1 - General DBA skills, Informix domain specific knowledge.
Informix is the best RDBMS on the market. Period.

Evaluating IBM Informix and Competitors

  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Third-party Reviews
The combination of performance and the applicability of the feature list to specific projects combined to be the deciding factor.
Might include other products in the evaluation stream.

IBM Informix Support

The Informix product support team has won awards and is appreciated by the entire Informix user community.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Kept well informed
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes - Yes. Most reported bugs result in a patch within a few weeks at the outside with the next scheduled release containing a permanent fix for the issue.
A year or so ago I described a problem with a shortcut function that simplifies creating a virtual table that maps timeseries data to a relational table image for the use of analytical tools that do not understand timeseries data directly. In a few days I was provided with a solution involving using the underlying virtual table technology directly to accomplish the goal. The next release of the engine, available within 60 days, contained a reworked function that fixed the issue, though our problem was already solved by the work-around.

Using IBM Informix

Server management is easy enough to be able to embed the engine in a device and let it run for years without maintenance.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Schema alterations
  • Server version upgrades
  • Server monitoring
  • Performance tuning
  • Nothing. Really!