Well I have seen the release notes for IDS 10.00.UC4 but it is still
not
on the trail download site...

why the delay?

It's very nice of IBM to make me click through several pages to see if
it has been put up their yet..and to send me an email each time..but
why is the trial version not up there the same time as the IDS
Information Centre
gets updated?

<david (AT) smooth1 (DOT) co.uk> wrote

It's available on Passport Advantage, so now you have the best Informix job
going, can't you use your new employers' access to download it?

what difference does it make if the trial version is UC3 or UC4?

david (AT) smooth1 (DOT) co.uk wrote:
through each of the pages could be considered a trail download but maybe
we'd still think of it as a TRIAL not a TRAIL. )

Incidentally, it does bring up something that has always been curious about
Informix products in general.

Why isn't there a standard naming nomenclature for Informix products?

Why isn't there a standard compression method and payload delivery for
Informix products?

I noticed three different compression methods for the various products,
for Linux. .gz and .Z . I don't even know if my Linux has an uncompress
command, gzip or bunzip2 are the standard. Have them all the same,
tar.gz for UNIX/Linux, and .zip for Windows. If maximum compression is
insisted upon, then go for bunzip2 format, but only if you really can't
just use .tar.gz. If you have to use compress format ( .Z ) then use it
for UNIX, but not for Linux platforms, nobody uses compress on Linux when
you can use gzip.

David, since you asked for some feature requests, add this to your list:

1. Prefix all informix product downloads the same, i.e. ifmx.whatever.tar.gz
or informix.whatever.tar.gz with the release number--which seems to show up on
some of the downloads but not others. Make them consistent.

2. Use a standard compression method for all payloads, i.e. tar.gz Winzip can
handle TAR and GZIPped files. Windows payloads seem to be better constructed,
but even these should be given a once over to make sure they're consistent. Use
..Z only for UNIX platforms that probably don't have gzip or bunzip2.

3. Download page(s). This should not be such a mess. IBM needs to really
clean this up, and get away from being so lazy. Instead of a search-style
page that is cumbersome to read, sub-divide the downloads by Operating System
and don't display every know version of the product, just the latest, like
a lot of other downloads do, like on Source Forge. If you want older versions
then take them to a search page. It's so damn confusing what to download, and
in many cases I forgot what I was downloading or couldn't be sure it was the
right choice after too many choices.

"scottishpoet" <dryburghj (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

Bug: 173090 SERVER CRASH WITH "ASSERT FAILED: YIELD_PROCESSOR: CONDITIONAL
LATCH COUNT NON-ZERO IN THREAD 7" AT 2ND NODE IN A 2-NODE REPLICATION
SCENARIO perhaps?

Well the trail releases should be sync'ed with the actual releases.

I thought IBM were at least that professional.

Who would want to trial something that is one fixpack behind the latest
version?

david (AT) smooth1 (DOT) co.uk said:
I don't think most people take trials quite that seriously.

--
Bye now,
Obnoxio

"C'est pas parce qu'on n'a rien à dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule"
- Coluche

did i mention i like nulls? heck, i even go so far as to say that all
columns in a table except the primary key could/should be nullable. this
has certain advantages, for example, if you need to insert a child record
and you don't have a parent row for it, just do an insert into the parent
table with the primary key value (everything else null), and voila,
relational integrity is preserved. but this is, admittedly, a bit
controversial among modellers.

--r937, dbforums.com

Double Echo wrote:
You can use gzip (gunzip) to decompress files created with compress
(.Z), as well as uncompress itself, of course.

A .tar.gz file is typically 10-20% bigger than a .tar.bz2 file of the
same material.

Once upon a time, there was a program called pack (and unpack, and pcat)
that used the suffix .z (lower-case). It was nowhere near as efficient
as compress (.Z), which in turn is not as efficient as gzip, which is
usually less efficient than bzip2. The zip program - available on (or
for) Windows and Unix/Linux - is about as efficient as gzip.

Personally, I still use gzip when I distribute SQLCMD, mainly because I
always have done, and I use the .tgz suffix to boot. For DBD::Informix,
I use .tar.gz because everything in the Perl world does. Otherwise, I
use bzip2 unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. And I
typically uncompress and then compress (with bzip2) anything that isn't
suppplied as a bzip2 file, simply to save the space. Doubly so with the
older Informix software. The latest versions are mainly compressed
material already and recompressing them does nothing significant to save
space.

Note that GNU TAR 1.15.1 has built-in support for bzip2 (-j to create),
and auto-detects the compressor program for decompression. That permits
you to type:

tar -xf tarfile1.tgz
tar -xf tarfile2.tar.gz
tar -xf tarfile3.tar.bz2
....

All are detected and managed correctly.

--
Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h>
Email: jleffler (AT) earthlink (DOT) net, jleffler (AT) us (DOT) ibm.com
Guardian of DBD::Informix v2005.02 -- http://dbi.perl.org/

Jonathan Leffler wrote:

Yes, good points, but if I could be so bold as to reintroduce my other main
'sticking' point, was that many of the products remain inconsistent in
their naming of the payload, and the delivery is cumbersome to say the
least. It is also more realistic to think that the software delivery
mechanisms at IBM could be fixed, as a real priority, over some of the
other challenges that have been talked about, such as marketing. Maybe
improving delivery of product could be a first step towards improving
access to the products, which in turn leads to more usage, more awareness
of product, etc etc. The easier you make it to get the product into the
hands of those that may want it, the better the chances are that YOUR
product will be used vs somebody else's. And, if IBM is willing enough
to even broach the idea of a 're-branding' as has been announced, it
certainly couldn't hurt to clean up the web site so that it isn't so
damn messy and muddled.

Double Echo said:
I can't believe that someone finds IBM's website difficult to use. |

--
Bye now,
Obnoxio

"C'est pas parce qu'on n'a rien à dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule"
- Coluche

did i mention i like nulls? heck, i even go so far as to say that all
columns in a table except the primary key could/should be nullable. this
has certain advantages, for example, if you need to insert a child record
and you don't have a parent row for it, just do an insert into the parent
table with the primary key value (everything else null), and voila,
relational integrity is preserved. but this is, admittedly, a bit
controversial among modellers.

--r937, dbforums.com