Please help with decision for large tender. Informix/Oracle

Hi there.

I am currently involved in a decision where we are faced with a choice between switching to INFORMIX or staying with our current Oracle DBMS and tools.

We have just finished a pilot project with Oracle 7.1 and the associated tools (forms 4.5, reports, plus etc). Unfortunately, Informix came in under Oracle in pricing (big surprise), and the management here is very "bottom line" oriented. I feel that the fact that we would lose our front end, all the money we have spent on support, developer training ($$$$$) etc. is enough of an argument, but the managers are hung up on some benchmarks we did where Informix came out significantly ahead.

Also working against me is the fact the offer includes free developer training on ther GUI tools (NewEra), free dba training, free application re-development (whatever the heck that means - pretty vague), and free data porting. The kicker was the cost of support afterwards. VERY pricey.

I basically have 3 questions:

1. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has been through the nightmare of porting your application data. What issues are the biggest stoppers?
2. Has anyone had extensive experience with the Informix GUI development tools? How long have they been out? Are they as buggy as Forms? How long should a developer with 2 yrs experience with Forms take to be productive using NewEra? Are the tools as tightly integrated as Oracle?
3. What do you think about Informix support? I was told that updates are not free as they are with Oracle support agreements. I have a hard time believing that the support could be worth what they were asking.

I would appreciate anybody's help on this, as we need to make a decision fairly soon.

Thanks in advance.
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• Dwayne K. King * email: dwayne_at_dwayne.freenet.kiev.ua *
• International Monetary Fund * phone: (011-380-44) 212-54-81 *

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