Instant Intranet

Informix Dynamic Server is a great database engine, simple to use and offering great performance. The acquisition of Illustra in 1997 gave Informix an extra edge over its competitors, adding support for object-relational technology. The introduction of datablades, a technology that allowed to support complex data types such as spatial data or video inside a traditional relational database opened a lot of interesting possibilities.

One of those datablades, the Excalibur Text Datablade was specially interesting. It allowed to store all kind of text documents (HTML, Word, PDF, etc.) within IDS 9.x and perform complex full-text search SQL queries. Using this functionality I built several custom-made applications for some of our customers (Televisa, CISEN, Banpaís, etc.). It soon became apparent that in order to scale and replicate these success stories at a faster pace we needed to have a base product that could be easly customized to fit any customer need.

I convinced the L.A. VP that building a Content Management System based on IDS was a good idea and that I should lead the project. I was authorized to hire two trainees to help me out and we started to work on Instant Intranet. It was a great success. We sold the product to many customers in most LA countries. Today, we still have important customers such as Pemex or SAT (the Mexican equivalent to the IRS) that rely on the technology.

After IBM bought Informix we stopped looking for new customers as this solution competed directly against some of Lotus offerings, but we continued supporting existing customers.