Informix

For the company, see Informix Corporation.
IBM Informix
Developer(s)IBM / HCL Technologies
Stable release
14.10.xC10 / March 15, 2023 (2023-03-15)[1]
TypeMulti-model database
LicenseCommercial proprietary software
Websitewww.ibm.com/products/informix
HCL Informix
Developer(s) HCL Technologies
Stable release
14.10.xC10 / March 31, 2023 (2023-03-31)[2]
TypeMulti-model database
LicenseCommercial proprietary software
Websitewww.hcltechsw.com/informix
OneDB
Developer(s) HCL Technologies
Stable release
2.0.1.3 / May 1, 2023 (2023-05-01)[3]
TypeMulti-model database
LicenseCommercial proprietary software
Websitewww.hcltechsw.com/onedb

Informix[4][5][6] is a product family within IBM's Information Management division that is centered on several relational database management system (RDBMS) and multi-model database offerings. The Informix products were originally developed by Informix Corporation, whose Informix Software subsidiary was acquired by IBM in 2001.

In April 2017, IBM delegated active development and support to HCL Technologies for 15 years, with a number of IBM employees working on Informix also moving to HCL. As part of this arrangement IBM will continue to market and sell it as IBM Informix to their customers, with HCLTech able to market and sell it as HCL Informix.[7]

The current version of Informix is 14.10 and forms the basis of several product editions with variation in capacity and functionality. The Informix database has been used in many high transaction rate OLTP applications in the retail, finance, energy and utilities, manufacturing and transportation sectors. More recently the server has been enhanced to improve its support for data warehouse workloads.[8] Through extensions, Informix supports data types that are not a part of the SQL standard.

On July 24, 2020, HCL announced OneDB Database Server V1.0.0.0 as a multi-model (relational, object-relational, and dimensional) DBMS based on Informix.[9] On August 19, 2021 HCL released OneDB 2.0 as a cloud native, multi-cloud, Kubernetes-orchestrated offering.[10]

On December 29, 2021, Actian (formerly Ingres Corporation) became fully owned by HCL America.[11] Actian remained a separate entity, now acting as the Data, Analytics and Insights division of HCLSoftware.[12] It is expected that the Informix portfolio will be transferred from HCL to Actian, with HCL Informix and OneDB already available for download at Actian's Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) portal.

  1. ^ "Informix V14.10 documentation". IBM. May 24, 2023. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  2. ^ "Release documentation and machine notes for HCL Informix, v14.10.xC10". May 24, 2023. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  3. ^ "What's new in HCL OneDB 2.0.1". Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  4. ^ Barnaby J. Feder (April 25, 2001). "I.B.M. Will Acquire Database Unit of Informix for $1 Billion". The New York Times. Retrieved October 25, 2022.
  5. ^ Morgan, Timothy Prickett (March 21, 2005). "IBM Buys Other Half of Informix with Ascential Acquisition". IT Jungle. Archived from the original on March 9, 2013. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  6. ^ Anina Ot (February 24, 2022). "The Data Replication Market in 2022". Datamation. Retrieved October 25, 2022.
  7. ^ "IIUG" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 8, 2017. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  8. ^ "Informix Gets Optional Data Warehousing Feature From IBM". InformationWeek. March 6, 2009.
  9. ^ "HCL OneDB V1.0.0.0 Product overview". Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  10. ^ Amanda Tevis (August 19, 2021). "Introducing HCL OneDB 2.0". Blog HCLSoftware. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  11. ^ "HCL Technologies subsidiary boosts stake to fully own Actian Corporation's parent". December 30, 2021. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  12. ^ "HCL Technologies and Sumeru Equity Partners to Acquire Actian Corporation". Retrieved May 25, 2023.