Best way to compare dates is probably to format them like YYYYMMDD. That way you can compare them numerically.

You can convert your date into this format like this:

$std_date = sprintf('%04d%02d%02d', 
                    (split m|/|, $date)[2, 1, 0]);
[download]

And I'm betting there's an Informix function that returns dates in a very similar format.

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