Informix

Last updated

IBM Informix
Developer(s) IBM / HCL Technologies
Stable release
14.10.xC10 / March 15, 2023 (2023-03-15) [1]
Type Multi-model database
License Commercial proprietary software
Website www.ibm.com/products/informix
HCL Informix
Developer(s) HCL Technologies
Stable release
14.10.xC10 / March 31, 2023 (2023-03-31) [2]
Type Multi-model database
License Commercial proprietary software
Website www.hcltechsw.com/informix
OneDB
Developer(s) HCL Technologies
Stable release
2.0.1.3 / May 1, 2023 (2023-05-01) [3]
Type Multi-model database
License Commercial proprietary software
Website www.hcltechsw.com/onedb

Informix [4] [5] [6] is a product family within IBM's Information Management division that is centered on several relational database management system (RDBMS) and multi-model database offerings. The Informix products were originally developed by Informix Corporation, whose Informix Software subsidiary was acquired by IBM in 2001.

Contents

In April 2017, IBM delegated active development and support to HCL Technologies for 15 years, with a number of IBM employees working on Informix also moving to HCL. As part of this arrangement IBM will continue to market and sell it as IBM Informix to their customers, with HCLTech able to market and sell it as HCL Informix. [7]

The current version of Informix is 14.10 and forms the basis of several product editions with variation in capacity and functionality. The Informix database has been used in many high transaction rate OLTP applications in the retail, finance, energy and utilities, manufacturing and transportation sectors. More recently the server has been enhanced to improve its support for data warehouse workloads. [8] Through extensions, Informix supports data types that are not a part of the SQL standard.

On July 24, 2020, HCL announced OneDB Database Server V1.0.0.0 as a multi-model (relational, object-relational, and dimensional) DBMS based on Informix. [9] On August 19, 2021 HCL released OneDB 2.0 as a cloud native, multi-cloud, Kubernetes-orchestrated offering. [10]

On December 29, 2021, Actian (formerly Ingres Corporation) became fully owned by HCL America. [11] Actian remained a separate entity, now acting as the Data, Analytics and Insights division of HCLSoftware. [12] It is expected that the Informix portfolio will be transferred from HCL to Actian, with HCL Informix and OneDB already available for download at Actian's Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) portal.

Key products

As of 2023, the current version of both IBM and HCL Informix is 14.10. The major enhancements made over previous releases were adding built-in index compression, integration of JSON collections with support for MongoDB JSON drivers into the server, and an enhancement permitting database objects to be partitioned across multiple servers in a cluster or grid (aka sharding). Queries can optionally return data from the locally connected server instance or from an entire grid with the same SQL.

Informix version 14.10 introduced support for partial indexing where only a subset of the rows in a table are indexed and for multi-valued key indexes which support indexing the elements within multi-valued data types such as LIST, SET, MULTISET, and BSON array fields.

Heterogeneous clusters are fully supported, and there are several deployment options that are available, including some that provide very high levels of data redundancy and fault tolerance. This feature is marketed by IBM as Informix Flexible Grid.

IBM Informix is offered in a number of editions, including free developer editions, editions for small and mid-sized business, and editions supporting the complete feature set and designed to be used in support of the largest enterprise applications. There used to be an advanced data warehouse edition, including the Informix Warehouse Accelerator (IWA), but it was deprecated in favor of the Advanced Enterprise Edition (which give entitlement rights to IWA).

Regarding HCL Informix, there is a single commercial version available, which is compatible with the IBM Informix Advanced Enterprise Edition, also having rights to IWA. There is also a trial version available, with no known limits, except for an expiration date.

HCL Informix 14.10 key highlights include:

Positioning

Informix is generally considered to be optimized for environments with very low or no database administration, including use as an embedded database. It has a long track record of supporting very high transaction rates and providing uptime characteristics needed for mission critical applications such as manufacturing lines and reservation systems. Informix has been widely deployed in the retail sector, where the low administration overhead makes it useful for in-store deployments.

With the ability to deeply embed Informix in gateways and routers, timeseries support, small footprint, and low administration requirements, Informix is also targeted at Internet-of-Things solutions, where many of the data-handling requirements can be handled with gateways that embed Informix and connect sensors and devices to the internet.

Other products

In addition to the products based on the version 14.1 engine the Informix family also includes a number of legacy database products which are still supported in market. These include Informix OnLine, Informix Standard Edition (SE), and Informix C-ISAM. These products are simpler and smaller footprint database engines that are also frequently embedded in third party applications. Collectively these products are often referred to as the "Informix Classics".

The Informix family also includes:

Obsolete and non-IBM Informix heritage products can run via emulation on modern hardware. [ citation needed ]

Training and certification

IBM Training includes a complete set of core Data Servers Training courses that apply to Informix. These courses delve into many essential Informix concepts, from fundamentals to advanced SQL topics. [16]

As part of IBM's Academic Initiative, IBM is offering Informix software, documentation and training to higher education institutions worldwide through its new Informix on Campus program. IBM is offering an inclusive package of Informix materials to college faculty called "Informix In a Box", [17] which offers hands-on labs and PowerPoints to use in lessons, recorded training for teachers, DVDs with class material and VMware virtual appliance images, as well as T-shirts for students.

Users groups

Users groups remain active [18] in Belgium, [19] Croatia, [20] France, Germany, the United States, and many other countries. The IIUG (International Informix Users Group) acts as a federation of those user groups and provides numerous services to its members.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Database</span> Organized collection of data in computing

In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze the data. The DBMS additionally encompasses the core facilities provided to administer the database. The sum total of the database, the DBMS and the associated applications can be referred to as a database system. Often the term "database" is also used loosely to refer to any of the DBMS, the database system or an application associated with the database.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Object database</span> Type of database management system

An object database or object-oriented database is a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. Object databases are different from relational databases which are table-oriented. A third type, object–relational databases, is a hybrid of both approaches. Object databases have been considered since the early 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingres (database)</span> Database software

Ingres Database is a proprietary SQL relational database management system intended to support large commercial and government applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM Db2</span> Relational model database server

Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and XML. The brand name was originally styled as DB2 until 2017, when it changed to its present form.

Oracle Database is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation.

A database server is a server which uses a database application that provides database services to other computer programs or to computers, as defined by the client–server model. Database management systems (DBMSs) frequently provide database-server functionality, and some database management systems rely exclusively on the client–server model for database access.

HCL Sametime Premium is a client–server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence information, enterprise instant messaging, web conferencing, community collaboration, and telephony capabilities and integration. Currently it is developed and sold by HCL Software, a division of Indian company HCL Technologies, until 2019 by the Lotus Software division of IBM.

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of relational database management systems. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

Apache Derby is a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by the Apache Software Foundation that can be embedded in Java programs and used for online transaction processing. It has a 3.5 MB disk-space footprint.

IBM Informix C-ISAM is an X/Open standards-compliant Application programming interface (API) to an Indexed Sequential Access Method or ISAM.

Microsoft SQL Server is a proprietary relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which may run either on the same computer or on another computer across a network. Microsoft markets at least a dozen different editions of Microsoft SQL Server, aimed at different audiences and for workloads ranging from small single-machine applications to large Internet-facing applications with many concurrent users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illustra</span> Database software

Illustra was a commercialized version of the Postgres object-relational database management system (DBMS) sold by Illustra Information Technologies, a company founded in 1992 and formed by Michael Stonebraker, Gary Morgenthaler and several of Michael Stonebraker's current and former students including: Wei Hong, Jeff Meredith, Michael Olson, Paula Hawthorn, Jeff Anton, Cimarron Taylor and Michael Ubell.

An embedded database system is a database management system (DBMS) which is tightly integrated with an application software; it is embedded in the application. It is a broad technology category that includes:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Stonebraker</span> American computer scientist (born 1943)

Michael Ralph Stonebraker is a computer scientist specializing in database systems. Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to many relational databases. He is also the founder of many database companies, including Ingres Corporation, Illustra, Paradigm4, StreamBase Systems, Tamr, Vertica and VoltDB, and served as chief technical officer of Informix. For his contributions to database research, Stonebraker received the 2014 Turing Award, often described as "the Nobel Prize for computing."

Versant Corporation was an American-based software company building specialized NoSQL data management systems. Versant was founded in Menlo Park, California (USA) in 1988. It was headquartered in Redwood City, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actian Zen</span>

Actian Zen is an ACID-compliant, zero-DBA, embedded, nano-footprint, multi-model, Multi-Platform database management system (DBMS) developed originally by Pervasive Software, which was acquired by Actian Corporation in 2013.

Informix Corporation was a software company located in Menlo Park, California. It was a developer of relational database software for computers using the Unix, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh operating systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actian</span> American software company

Actian is an American software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California that provides analytics-related software, products, and services. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and data integration solutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DBeaver</span> Multi-platform database administration software

DBeaver is a SQL client software application and a database administration tool. For relational databases it uses the JDBC application programming interface (API) to interact with databases via a JDBC driver. For other databases (NoSQL) it uses proprietary database drivers. It provides an editor that supports code completion and syntax highlighting. It provides a plug-in architecture that allows users to modify much of the application's behavior to provide database-specific functionality or features that are database-independent. This is a desktop application written in Java and based on Eclipse platform.

References

  1. ↑ "Informix V14.10 documentation". IBM . May 24, 2023. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  2. ↑ "Release documentation and machine notes for HCL Informix, v14.10.xC10". May 24, 2023. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  3. ↑ "What's new in HCL OneDB 2.0.1" . Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  4. ↑ Barnaby J. Feder (April 25, 2001). "I.B.M. Will Acquire Database Unit of Informix for $1 Billion". The New York Times . Retrieved October 25, 2022.
  5. ↑ Morgan, Timothy Prickett (March 21, 2005). "IBM Buys Other Half of Informix with Ascential Acquisition". IT Jungle. Archived from the original on March 9, 2013. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  6. ↑ Anina Ot (February 24, 2022). "The Data Replication Market in 2022". Datamation . Retrieved October 25, 2022.
  7. ↑ "IIUG" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 8, 2017. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  8. ↑ "Informix Gets Optional Data Warehousing Feature From IBM". InformationWeek . March 6, 2009.
  9. ↑ "HCL OneDB V1.0.0.0 Product overview" . Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  10. ↑ Amanda Tevis (August 19, 2021). "Introducing HCL OneDB 2.0". Blog HCLSoftware. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  11. ↑ "HCL Technologies subsidiary boosts stake to fully own Actian Corporation's parent". December 30, 2021. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  12. ↑ "HCL Technologies and Sumeru Equity Partners to Acquire Actian Corporation" . Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  13. ↑ "Informix Warehouse Accelerator". Deister. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  14. ↑ "Overview of Informix Warehouse Accelerator". IBM. March 15, 2023. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  15. ↑ "Importing data with Enterprise Gateway products". IBM. January 8, 2024. Retrieved January 30, 2024.
  16. ↑ "IBM - IBM Information Management Training and Certification". 306.ibm.com. April 1, 2010. Retrieved June 16, 2010.
  17. ↑ developerWorks: Wikis - Informix on Campus - Informix in a Box
  18. ↑ "Local User Groups".
  19. ↑ "Welcome to the Benelux Informix User Group".
  20. ↑ "Adria IUG (Udruga Informix korisnika Adria)".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.