Martin Fuerderer wrote:

> Looking at this (and similar issues) from a different angle ...:
>
> As a professional at work (in my profession that is) I want control.
> And many options, parameters, etc. provide a lot of control (assuming
> they work . That is control for the professional who knows what he
> is doing. Ideally the stuff works somehow automatically-magically with
> some default settings, so it would work for those that "do not
> (exactly) know what they are doing". But I would not expect that it
> works optimally for my needs. And there's nothing more annoying than
> some "system" (often software) that "thinks" it knows better than
> myself what I want. Such behaviour really puts me off!
>
> A database system like IDS is a very complex system. Why is there
> the expectation that such systems should work optimally in all sorts
> of disparate scenarios?
>
> Nobody expects that the average passenger can fly a Boing 767 in a
> safe way. There's tangible hardware, and generally wide acceptance
> that "touching earth the wrong way" is a disaster.
>
> But with highly complex software systems? People expect an
> out-of-the-box installation on any chosen hardware in any chosen
> infrastructure, and of course it should scale very well for 1 user
> just developing something up to thousands of users running complex
> queries. And, please, all this without having to configure anything.
>
> My guess is, such expectations prevail because there is no tangible
> hardware. Nothing to really see ... so it must be easy.
> But I'm sure there must be a more profound way to explain this
> interesting phenomen that again and again astonishes me since many
> years.
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
> --
> Martin Fuerderer
> IBM Informix Development Munich, Germany
> Information Management

I tend to agree with Martin... There is a risk that one of this
"self-prepared" installations become a production environment...

I will never forget that I was called once to help a hardware partner to
run a custom benchmark prepared by the final customer... This final
customer told me that the previous benchmark (on another hardware
vendor) was run with the default settings off the onconfig.std... I
still find this hard to believe, but their eyes got bigger as soon as
the first results popped up...

Nevertheless, I understand this need. I think we should start by
something really small (just to see stores_demo database) and have maybe
two more options...

This first option should be smaller than suggested by Obnoxio...

Quote:
"
onconfig.sandbox - 1CPU, 512MB RAM, 5GB, 1 tempdbspace of 1GB
onconfig.small - 2 CPU, 2GB RAM, 20GB, 2 temp spaces of 2.5GB
onconfig.medium - 4 CPU, 4GB RAM, 100GB, 3 temp spaces of 5GB
onconfig.large - 8 CPU, 8GB RAM, 250GB, 6 temp spaces of 10GB
"

I'd say 100-200MB of RAM and a few hundreds MB for total storage for the
first option.
Besides this, maybe a few questions about number of CPUs to use, how
much RAM and how much disk space. Them arrange this in a rational manner.

But *always* let the customer know that this is wrong, and that creating
a system with IDS or any other top RDBMS requires knowledge and planning...

I imagine that someone who pays for this kind of software should
understand this...

It's more or less the same thing as defining the correct extent size...
Any value you choose is bad.

Regards,

Fernando Nunes
Portugal

http://informix-technology.blogspot.com
My email works... but I don't check it frequently...