Eric- I prefer that we starting using 'Informix' vs. "IDS"...if you are ok with that...thanks, rob

I know this is under the 'German content' header, and with all the honors to the German language, for those of us not knowing it, it is in practice close to reading chinese. A pitty you do not create that newsletter in English, or at least get it translated to English. We need this type of quality write ups distributed also in other languages, don´t we. Thank you, Josem.

Ping is working because the firewall lets it through. The firewall won't let SQLI through by default, though, you need to open the ports for that to happen.

Thanks Spokey ,

Now iam able to make an connection From linux to windows (both ODBC & .net connectivty)

The problem is firewall is enabled in the Linux machine, i have turned off the firewall now it is working fine

But one more thing Even though my firewall is enabled my ping is working fine from both the ends,but i didnt get any error numbers

Any how now it is working

Thanks
Karthik

Hi Spokey,

There are typo in my earlier posting

Please find the correct one

Onconfig file
-------------
DBSERVERNAME live
DBSERVERALIASES live_tcp

They have moved the 4gl application to J2EE. I believe it is a old news.

http://ajmoreti.blogspot.com/

Spokey,

with a telemarketing campaign you won't sell a single IDS license to a new, non-informix customer.

This only helps to squeeze the money out of the existing customers, who might already forgot that they have some Informix instances running and have run out of maintenance. They might think about it and order an upgrade.
Telemarketing campaigns are probably a very efficient method as they only cost a small amount of money and - looking at the high IDS prices - IBM earns a lot more. Compliance inspections are another cost efficient way for IBM, but don't lead to a single new Informix customer.

This only commits the fact that IBM is not willing to invest real money in the promotion of Informix. Telemarketing campaigns don't help to bring Informix back on the radar of the upper management.

Oracle or Microsoft with it's strong market presence could choose such a method as they are established enough but for IBM Informix it leads to a dying in small increments (:-

Spokey,

good to hear that IBM does plenty of marketing for Informix in UK. In Germany, I can see almost no activity from IBM Marketing. But it might be, that people not wearing IBM eyeglasses, have a different understanding what plenty and serious marketing is :-)

You have to compare like with like. Tivoli is a brand and thus there exists much more product awareness for the Tivoli products - including Tivoli Storage Manager - in comparison to Informix which is well hidden under the Information Management brand.

Although I believe that IBM makes 80-90% of their revenues in the software business with a few key products. So I don't request from IBM that they advertise all the other crap that they own, just the few key products that make most of their revenue. I'm sure that Informix is one of those products. BTW, if you have followed the discussions on c.d.i. this year, some DB2 guys would like to see
more product specific advertising/marketing from IBM as well.

Let's compare IDS to DB2. That is more an "apple/apple" comparison:

The situation for DB2 - in terms of product awareness - is quite more comfortable than that of IDS. In the first 5-6 years after the takeover of Informix in 2001, IBM (Janet P.) simply destroyed a valuable Informix business. Things have changed since then. IBM today tries at least to preserve the existing Informix business but does too little to make Informix an attractive choice for new customers. The old message that Informix is a "dead horse" while DB2 is the future has been well established by IBM in the market and - believe it or not - is still in the heads at least of the upper management.

SAP is another weak point. Informix (including IDS 11.5) is still supported for certain R3 releases but the new SAP software will no longer run on it. I honestly believe that, if someone from the top management (Steve Mills for example) would talk seriously to the SAP top management and would be willing to make some admissions (i.e. delivering men power for porting new SAP releases to IDS), SAP would consider re-supporting IDS. From my point of view such a deal would be a win-win situation: SAP could protect the still existing Informix installations from migrating to Oracle and would have an excellent database alternative for new installation in segments where DB2 doesn't fit that well. IBM on the other side would create tremendous product awareness for IDS with such a deal. This would be an important sign to other software vendors as well that Informix is taken seriously by SAP (and IBM).
So from my point of view, it is only a matter of investment, an investment that IBM is willing to do for DB2 but not for IDS (:-

But not only has DB2 the SAP advantage, if you look at the results last last poll, it becomes clear, that DB2 receives significant more marketing coverage by IBM than IDS does. For example I haven't seen a single press release from IBM at the IOD for IDS. Even the new IDS/BladeServer bundles haven't - with the exception of some some twitter messages - been passed to the press. That is simply annoying (:-

I won't discuss the other areas here where DB2 is favored by IBM and IDS is still treated as 'Cinderella'. You probably now them.

I'm only reflecting what other Informix Partners and Customer Advocates tell me again and again as well as the experiences I made myself:

There exists no product awareness for Informix in the market and IBM does much too little to change this ! Advertising or at least Co-Advertising with other IBM products (Cognos, BladeServers...) would definitely help to create product awareness for Informix even in the upper management.

It seems that Informix Partners, ISV's, Distributors and Customers are only 2nd class citizens for IBM (:-

IBM actually does plenty of marketing for Informix, at least it does here in the UK. However, I suspect you're thinking of product advertising, which IBM doesn't do for any of its brands, anywhere in the world.

Or so I'm told, anyway.

There are two constraints IBM has on the idea of product advertising:

1. There are squillions of products in IBM Software Group alone - if Informix gets advertised, then why should Tivoli Storage Manager not also get advertised? So just keeping on top of the advertising would be a logistical nightmare.

2. IBM likes to be able to show quantifiable results from its marketing spend. Unfortunately, spending money on product advertising rarely leads to an accountable sale, whereas a telemarketing campaign can show we made 200 calls and we got 50 sales (or whatever). Same for a mailshot.

Now, I'm not saying whether or not I agree with the points above, but these are the reasons why I've been told IBM will not do product advertising.

Hi,

I can't really answer this in any kind of sensible way. And I don't think this forum is read by a large enough section of the DBA community that you will get a sample of a useful size. I know there are some people who do it and I've not heard of any issues.

However, I don't believe in using meaningful keys, so I'm not really sure what a sequence will give you that a serial or serial8 wouldn't - is there any reason why you're not using those?

thanks