We're currently looking at Oracle as an option to replace this solution.

With IBM, we're finding there aren't a lot of new features coming out. Oracle, in contrast, always seems to have something new. 

In terms of data security, we see some improvement in Oracle, however, we don't see a lot of new things coming from Informix. While both have data replication, in terms of bi-directional replication, both vendors are still not that good, especially when there's a very huge volume of data replication. Right now, we have to use a third-party data replication by SharePlex.

I have evaluated other options, but they were mainly open-source solutions.

Oracle and SQL SERVER

I tested: 

• Windows based systems, such as FoxBase, but they were too limited.
• Oracle and PL/SQL were too expensive for my budget, extremely complex to implement, and had very limited development possibilities.

With Informix + Informix-4GL, I found exactly what I wanted for my projects.

Some customers have decided to leave Informix and sourly regretted this decision after the first severe issues appeared. Many of them came back to Informix.

The product has been available for approximately 19 years, since it is part of the system that the company bought.