Informix Software

History

1980

Roger Sipl and Laura King worked in Cromemco where they developed the small relational DBMS which is based on ISAM which was a part of a software package for report generation.

Afterwards Sipl and King left Cromemco and founded own company Relational Database Systems (RDS) in 1980. Marathon — the 16-bit version of their early implementation of ISAM became their first product. Marathon intended for operating system Onyx — versions Unix for early ZiLOG microprocessors.

In RDS they concentrated on the growing market of relational DBMS and released own product under the name of Informix (INFORMation on unIX) in 1981. As a part of Informix their own Informer language was delivered. Also the former of reports of ACE who allowed to take data from the database was a part of a packet and to represent them in a form, convenient for reading. The PERFORM tool, allowed users to address online data in databases and to edit them. Version 3.30 released at the beginning of 1986 became final release.

In 1985 RDS provided new, based on SQL, the engine of requests as a part of INFORMIX-SQL (ISQL) of version 1.10 (version 1.00 was never released). The product included new versions of ACE and PERFORM which supported SQL now. Selection of the access code to the database in process of the engine (sqlexec) became the most considerable difference of ISQL from the previous version of Informix — earlier it was a part of the client. It became a stage of transition to a client-server model of calculations. The evolving ISAM which was in fact Informix core in new incarnation received the name C-ISAM.

In the early eighties Informix remained the small player in the market of DBMS, but with growth of a populyaronost of UNIX and SQL in the mid-eighties, Informix share considerably grew. By 1986 they became rather big for the IPO. The company name changes on Informix Software. Products included INFORMIX-SQL of version 2.00 and INFORMIX-4GL 1.00. They were delivered as as a part of the DBMS engine and as independent tools (ISQL and I4GL respectively).

A series of the subsequent releases, predstvivshy the new engine of requests, gained fame as INFORMIX-Turbo. Turbo used new RSAM which was more productive in the multi-user environment in comparison with C-ISAM. With version 4.00 release in 1989, Turbo was renamed into INFORMIX-OnLine (the name reflected a possibility of creation of backup copies of databases at the working server and the users changing data at the time of creation of a backup). Also original product based on C-ISAM was separated from tools (ISQL and I4GL) and INFORMIX-SE (Standart Engine) is called. Version 5.00 released at the end of 1990 had full support of distributed transactions with two-phase confirmation and stored procedures. In version 5.01 there was also an opportunity to use triggers.

1988

In 1988 Informix purchases Innovative Software, producers of office systems for Unix and DOS under the name of SmartWare and WingZ, the innovation program for work with spreadsheets for Macintosh Apple.

WingZ provided the advanced graphical interface, supported volume spreadsheets and also gave a programming opportunity in the HyperScript language which had some similarity to the HyperCard language. The original release was very successful in due time: WingZ was on the second place in popularity later Microsoft Excel. In 1990 WingZ was ported on a large number of other platforms (in the majority it were Unix system). During this period general investments into workstations based on Unix began that would allow to use them for processing of large financial models. Some (not really long) time WingZ was rather successful in the niche. Despite it, it suffered from a lack of developer and marketing resources, it is possible because of the general misunderstanding of the market of not server applications. In the early nineties WingZ became noncompetitive and was sold in 1995. Also Informix sold the license Clarise which combined WingZ with the updated graphical interface. The product Claris Resolve became result.

1994

After failure in the market of the office software, Informix it was refocused on the growing market of database servers. In 1994, as a result of cooperation with Sequent Computer Systems, Informix releases version 6.00 of the DBMS. Dynamically Scalable Architecture (Dynamic Scalable Architecture, DSA) became the main innovation.

DSA involved considerable processing of the core of DBMS which got support of horizontal and vertical parallelism. Now the core based on the principles of a multitreding perfectly was suitable for the symmetric multiprocessor systems which soon became leaders in a line of such large vendors as Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. Two forms of a prallelizm made a product leading on scalability in the market both in case of OLTP systems, and for data warehouses.

The name was replaced with Informix Dynamic Server after the product was not for long called by Obsidian, and then Informix OnLine Dynamic Server. By then, as Version 7 appeared in the market of a SMP system already gained some popularity, as well as Unix. In fact Version 7 was ahead of rivals by generation and resided in leaders in tests. As a result by 1997 Informix firmly affirmed on the second place as the DBMS list of vendors, with ease having forced out Sybase.

Making a start from success of Version 7, Informix separated a core of development of DBMS into two directions. The first, in the beginning known as XMP (eXtended Multi-Processing), became afterwards a line of Version 8 also known as XPS (eXtended Parallel Server). This direction was focused on development of data warehouses and parallelism for high-end of platforms, such as IBM RS-6000/SP.

1995

The second direction — technology of object and relational DBMS (O-R) — was created after purchase in 1996 by Illustra DBMS. Illustra written by the former developers Postgres under the leadership of one of pioneers of databases Michael Stounbreyker had a set of opportunities which allowed to work with data as with objects in sense of object-oriented programming. Such opportunity allowed to reduce time of development of many projects considerably. In Illustra for the first time there were DataBlade-modules which allowed to create the new data types and other opportunities expanding functionality of the basic server. Thus the server could get support of space and multimedia data. All these opportunities were included in Informix Universal Server (IUS) or Version 9.

Both new versions, V8 (XPS) and V9 (IUS) which appeared in the market in 1996 made Informix of the first among "the big three" of the companies of the 1990th years which are engaged in production of DBMS (other two companies — Oracle and Sybase) which offered the built-in support of O-R in the products. The modules DataBlade soon became rather popular: thanks to partnership with Illustra on the new platform it was ported about dozen of modules. Competitors added similar functionality later — in 1997 Oracle provided the packet of additions adding support of time series (engl. time series) and object data types, and Sybase addressed for similar addition to the third-party companies.

1996—1997

Though Informix was the technology leader in the market of DBMS, by 1996 delays of release of new products began. The covered by technical and marketing issues, new product for application development, Informix-NewEra, soon appeared in the shadow becoming all more popular than Java. Earlier Michael Stounbreyker promised that the Illustra technology will be implemented within a year after acquisition of the company, but, as well as Gartner Group foretold, on integration more than two years were required. At the beginning of 1997 discordant with the new direction of development of the company, the leading developer XPS of Harry Kelly passes to work to the main competitor — Oracle Corporation, having taken with himself 11 more developers. It forced Informix to file a lawsuit against Oracle to prevent loss of technical secrets.

Marketing failures, as well as errors at the level of the corporate management overshadowed technical superiority of Informix. On April 1, 1997 Informix stated that profit for the first quarter fell short of the expected 100 million dollars. The CEO Filip Whyte said that loss of orientation to core business of DBMS and excessive waste of resources on O-R technology became the reason of it. Significant operational losses and reductions of jobs followed. The company counted revenue for the period 1994 — 1996. It turned out that the considerable volume of profit which fell on the middle of the 1990th was made by sales of licenses to partners who in turn did not manage to implement them to end users. It and other violations eventually led to revaluation of revenue on 200 million dollars. Even after Whyte's resignation in July, 1997 the company continued to suffer from similar accounting costs and was forced to make one more recalculation of profit at the beginning of 1998.

Though speculation on the illiterate management continued to pursue the company, possibilities of Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) continued to grow. Shift of the management also began to bear fruit.

In November, 2002 Filip Whyte, the former CEO of Informix, was accused on eight points by the Federal Supreme Court of fraud. Thirteen months later he was found guilty of filling of the false registration statement of the Commission on the securities trading.

In May, 2004 the Ministry of Justice stated that Whyte is sentenced to two years in federal prison, to a fine of 10 thousand dollars, two years is conditional also to 300 hours of social jobs. The statement also said that the damage amount put to shareholders with Whyte's actions cannot be adequately evaluated from case papers.

The citizen of Germany and resident Walter Kyonigseder, the deputy vice president of the company for the European direction, was also accused. But the Supreme Court did not manage to achieve his extradition.

In November, 2005 there was a book telling about take-off and falling of Informix. It is written by one of the oldest staff of Informix. "Real story of Informix Software and Phil Whyte: Lessons of business and leadership for the management" allowed to look at the history of the company eyes of one of employees from within. The book contains the detailed description of progress of the company at the initial stage, awful falling and how the CEO Phil Whyte appeared in prison.

2001

Ardent Software purchase

Since 2001, the main events in life of Informix cease to concern technical innovations. In March the company purchases Ardent Software, the company history of which consists of merges and absorption. This acquisition added multispace UniVerse and UniData engines (together known as U2) to the list of DBMS engines already rather big by then to a portfolio of the company which included not only the Informix family, but also the Red Brick SQL engine focused on data warehouses and 100% of Java version SQL, Cloudscape (which was included afterwards in the corresponding implementation of J2EE).

IBM redeems Informix Software for $1 billion

On April 27, 2001 IBM announced intention to purchase for 1 bln. dollars of Informix Software, the company specializing in business of databases as a part of Informix corporation. It is supposed that this step will allow IBM to strengthen the business in the field of distributed databases and to help it to compete more successfully with the leader of this market, Oracle corporation.

"We play for the first place" — Janet Perna, the general manager of division of IBM Data Management Software did not leave the place for doubts in intentions of corporation.

IBM is going to integrate Informix Software with own division of IBM Software among which tasks there is both software development of data management, and integration of some Informix technologies in new versions of the flagship product — DB2 Universal Database. The corporation is going to support the products Informix and not to impose to users of these solutions the software of IBM, however to new customers will recommend to select DB2.

At the time of acquisition of Informix IBM the product line consisted from:

• Informix C-ISAM is the latest version of original Marathon DBMS
• Informix SE — was offered as system low-end for embedding in applications
• Informix OnLine is a full-fledged system for management of databases of the average size
• Informix Extended Parallel Server (XPS, V8) — high-end the version of V7 held for use on a large number of the distributed machines
• Informix Universal Server (V9) is a combination of the V7 OnLine engine with support of O-R mapping and DataBlade of modules from Illustra
• Informix-4GL is fourth generation of a programming language for applications
• Red Brick Warehouse is a product on management of data warehouses
• Cloudscape is the relational DBMS written entirely on Java, intended for mobile devices and J2EE-architecture. In 2004 Cloudscape was released by IBM under the name of Derby as DBMS open source, Apache Software Foundation is engaged in its support.

U2 set, UniVerse and UniData — multispace DBMS which represent an opportunity for work with networks, hierarchies, arrays and other data types which are difficult for simulating in SQL.