Introduction to IBM Informix
We live in a business world that requires a variety of software components to fully
handle the scope of business needs. When considered as a group, the products
have to work together, and they must scale well to cover the demands of
business to assure continued growth. Frequently, a significant criteria list might
be needed to specify all the facets that are encountered in daily, monthly, and
yearly periods of business operations. Developers must be sensitive to how the
database engine functions, what server-side capabilities can be brought into
play, and what development tasks need to occur on the client or application side.
In this chapter, we provide an overview of Informix products and capabilities. Our
approach is somewhat reference oriented. In addition to the overview of Informix
products, we also provide an awareness of the architecture of IBM Informix from
both the server-side and the client-side, to better acquaint the developer with
perspectives that you might need to know.
We also discuss the capabilities of the products in the Informix suite. The IBM
Informix products that we describe demonstrate how to manage business
performance, handle all types of business applications, minimize administration
through various self-automated and self-monitored options and, at all times,
optimize the setup to help minimize costs for maintenance and resource
allocations.