Neil Truby wrote:
> "Art S. Kagel" <kagel@bloomberg.net> wrote in message
> news:41BF66EE.1090103@bloomberg.net...
>
>
>>Don't go windows, you already know UNIX, go with Linux. There are many
>>excellent releases of Linux and IDS runs very well on them. You will not
>>be able to get IDS 7.20 (which BTW is very old, out of support, and not
>>even Y2K compliant). But you could build the new server, port everything
>>there, and make that the new main box while building a new backup box,
>>also running Linux. I'd recommend going to IDS 9.40UC5 or later.
>
>
> As a matter of interest, now that IBM has extended the end-of-support to v7,
> why would you recommend a user on a very old version of v7, by all accounts
> not very innovative, move to v9? Not saying your wrong but one of my users
> asked me the same question today: "Why should I move to v9 if I'm happy on
> v7?". "To help pay for my holiday in The Maldives" is the actual answer,
> but didn't seem politic, so I said I'd think about it. Thing is, I'd like
> to sure I'm not missing anything before replying. For a user who is
> comfortable with v7, does not want to use user-defined datatypes or
> datablades (in my experince, 90%++ of them), and whose database is modest
> enough in size that the 2G chunk limit is not a major inconvenience, what
> other imperatives are there?

My reasons are several, and I've made the recommendation to friends I've
helped out and here at Bloomberg. Vis:

- LVARCHAR is much nicer than VARCHAR and has uses that are not appropriate
for CHAR.
- I find functional indexes very useful.
- IDS 9.4 is 10-15% faster than 7.31.
- SERIAL8 & INT8 are very useful in the real world, much as I like DECIMAL.
- 9.4+ is the path that will grow more and more compatible with DB2 and its
successor. If later I decide that's the way to go, I'm already there.
Meanwhile I get the latest goodies as they appear like the rest of this list.
- Lower overhead checkpoints.
- Automatic logical log management.
- No more lock table overflows (I know 7.31 has it too).
- Ability to create external table interfaces to other data sources.
- Improved ER performance.
- DBspace renaming.
- Direct path to 9.5 with all it promises which includes several of my wish
list items.

Art S. Kagel