Re: informix/oracle comparison

Agreed, I have no desire for another a flame war. Just wanted to point out how volatile the marketplace is and thus how hard predictions are either way.

Are you sure you cited the whitepaper I refered to? Your statement "I understand your loyalty to your employer. I understand you are in the cheer leading section.", suggests that you might have missed that the post you answered to was from "wayne" and refered to the first April 24 statement. I do not know whether he is an IBMer and if, whether he works in marketing. I myself am a DB2 SQL compiler developer, no cheer leading skills required, nor the looks to do it :-)

Here are the quotes related to IDS from
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/informix/directions.html Specifically note the phrase "continue to enhance, support and sell", and even more important: "intends to continue to enhance the products beyond these commitments"

Quote:
"IBM intends to continue to enhance, sell and support IDS 7 and IDS 9. IDS 9 users may
upgrade to the upcoming 9.3 release due in the third quarter of 2001. IDS 9.3 is designed to deliver quality, replication and performance enhancements."

Here is the general conclusion (including all Informix products) Quote:
"Conclusion

IBM intends to continue to support the Informix products it plans to acquire and to enhance the majority of these products to fulfill the needs of customers and business partners. IBM is committed to meeting current Informix commitments for new releases, and intends to continue to enhance the products beyond these commitments to meet Informix customer requirements. IBM has a long tradition of extending customer investments by supporting and enhancing products which our customers rely on. Customers and business partners should be confident that their existing investments in the Informix portfolio will be supported and enhanced as described in this paper. Over the long term, IBM intends to integrate key
technologies from a number of different Informix products into future versions of DB2. However, Informix customers will not be forced to migrate to DB2. When and if customers are interested in migration, IBM will make it simple to integrate DB2 into their existing application and information infrastructure or migrate to DB2. IBM and Informix both have a strong history of supporting customers and business partners over the long term. This acquisition promises to bring Informix users continued support for their products of choice, greater financial stability from their DBMS vendor, and an exciting future with new levels of technical innovation." Received on Sun Jun 17 2001 - 15:06:15 CDT