N ot Worth the Wait

I don't think the review was too positive, given the criticisms of the complete lack of object-oriented technology, the poor programming interface, and the consequent downrating of the product. I'm not really an expert on Informix, SQL Server, or Sybase, but the real problem with these products (Sybase aside) is that, unlike Oracle, they don't run on many OSes. You can also criticize Informix for its thick-client datablade approach, the heavy-handed way it does database extensions, and a lack of relatively strong object-oriented features in all these systems. I would also criticize all these vendors for their inability to conform to a reasonable level of the SQL2 standard, much less to the upcoming SQL3 standard. --Robert J. Muller