 IBM Informix® Extended Parallel Server (XPS) is designed for the largest, most demanding, and most complex data warehouse applications. By including comprehensive data warehousing features and using a sophisticated shared-nothing underlying architecture, XPS achieves industry-leading performance and flexibility. These capabilities enable customers to make more profitable decisions from complex, query-intensive, analytical applications. Features
 The latest release of Informix XPS -- V8.5 -- includes these features: Application development ISTAR/Distributed Query Coordinator -- providing better access to data in a multiple database environment. INT8/SERIAL8 -- an eight-byte integer and an eight-byte serial type datatype for storing larger values in databases. MERGE (UPSERT) -- allows you, in one step, to present data to the server and have the server decide if an update or insert is needed.
Database administration Table-level point-in-time restore -- allows you to recover backed-up data more naturally. Scrubbed tables -- allows the a table transfer from one database of an instance to the production database in the same instance without the need to unload and reload the data. Immutable session variables -- makes the management of an XPS server much simpler since individual users are not permitted to reset their PDQ priority or certain other session variables that could severely impact the running systems. Current and client time zone -- allows you to set the time zone that the CURRENT and TODAY database functions will use for determining the current time and date. ONSTAT query start time -- enables "onstat -g ses" and "onstat -g sql" commands to show the time the server actually started working on a query and the amount of time a session has been working on queries throughout its life. Mixed restore -- provides a quicker method for recovering production systems after a restore.
Ease of use DBAccess history -- lets you easily modify and re-execute commands already run. Roles improvements -- enables you to designate a particular set of security settings for a group of persons who perform one type of work.
Performance Improved fragmentation elimination on date/time columns Improved optimization for groupby with expressions using implicit PDQ Indexes on non-logging tables OR predicates performance improvement OnBAR thread safe library support Read-only Dbspaces
Benefits
Using Informix XPS for your data warehousing solution offers many advantages, including: Performance -- Support intensive, high-volume querying; execute ad hoc queries on the go; update data while running queries; integrate new table fragments easily. Scalability -- Start small and grow your data warehouse solution as needed. Add a node on demand to increase server capacity, or increase database server capacity temporarily for high-volume processing periods. Flexibility -- Enable front- and back-end flexibility with a variety of access options, including Web browsers. Support multiple hardware configurations—SMP, MPP, clusters—on almost any UNIX® platform that meets your needs and budget. Control how sessions use database server resources. Advanced data warehousing capabilities -- Create and deploy a high-performance data warehouse with: - A smart optimizer that automatically designs the best plan for each query
- Fully parallel query plans for large queries
- Specialized query plans for complex queries
- Serial query plans for small queries
Simplified management -- Built-in management features ensure simplified database server management. Compatibility with IBM DB2® tools -- Extend the power of Informix XPS in business intelligence environments using DB2 Warehouse Manager and DB2 Relational Connect
For complete details on Informix XPS 8.5 capabilities, refer to the announcement letter. | 
