IIUG Insider (Issue #9) September 06, 2002

Highlights: Bye Says Fred, Last Words on IUC’02, Welcome Mohan, Querix Freebie, and More…

Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Insider! It contains timely and relevant information for the IBM Informix community.

Contents:

  1. Outgoing IIUG President’s Last Words
  2. 2002 Informix User Conference (IUC) – Going Live
  3. New IBM Advocate to the IIUG Board – Welcome Mohan Natraj
  4. Webcast – IUC Highlights & Announcements – 18 September
  5. Free Querix 4GL Development Suite Informix & DB2 for IIUG Members
  6. New IBM Offers for Informix & U2 Customers
  7. Informix CSDK Downloads Coming to IIUG’s Member Area
  8. Forum 2002 (USA’s Eastern Seaboard) – Software Contributions Requested
  9. Useful Links
  10. Closing and Credits

Outgoing IIUG President’s Last Words

The upcoming IIUG leadership events, to take place in conjunction with the Informix User Conference (IUC) in Anaheim, California, will be my last as IIUG President and Board member. It’s been a good ride, not lacking in drama or purpose. You all, the IIUG membership, have kept me pumped and engaged, allowing me to lead, represent, advocate, influence. I’ve made life-long friends and mastered the joys of daylong meetings that keep IIUG’s operation and services running and growing.

Now, after two terms and almost three years on the hot seat, I am happy to be transitioning my responsibilities to Jerry Hamilton. Jerry will become IIUG President on Tuesday, 10 September, at the IIUG Annual General Meeting. He was selected by the outgoing IIUG Board of Directors, and elected to the 2003 IIUG Board by you, IIUG members, as an incumbent. Working for an “end-user” company, Fleishman-Hillard, Jerry wears the Informix badge around the clock and has served on the IIUG Board since 2001. He’s a good, levelheaded man who will make a fine IIUG President.

What’s next for me? I will continue to serve IIUG in the capacity of Managing Director, augmenting the IIUG Board and taking direction from the IIUG President. In some ways, it will be business as usual. I’ll stay visible and continue working hard in support of IIUG’s membership. IBM will make this possible by underwriting my dedication without strings attached and as a gift to the Informix community. Thank you, Janet Perna! Actions indeed speak louder than words.

2002 Informix User Conference (IUC) – Going Live

How many times will we talk to you about IUC’02? Well… just enough to ensure that you can’t tell us later that you knew nothing about it.

Here’s our last pre-conference blurb. We hope to excite all who have already registered, and perhaps even convince a few more that IUC’02 is not to be missed.

  • Via our newly acquired web cam, IIUG will show you images of the floor live! Our intrepid team of techno-nerds will make this happen to keep you amused as well as informed. Don’t miss our exhibit booth and check out our home site starting Monday [http://www.iiug.org]. See us attendees say “Hi Mom”!
  • Submit your questions for the IUC’02 panels. These can be product- specific or business level: /calendar/iic/iic2002_questions.html. We will post a digest of the overall Q&A on our web site soon after IUC’02.
  • The following Informix-centric tutorials will be offered:
    • IDS Performance and Tuning Tricks – Instructor: Mark Scranton. Learn essential concepts that can be used daily for maintenance, support, troubleshooting, and performance tuning of an IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) database engine.
    • IDS Database Optimization – Instructor: Mike Lowe Learn about performance tuning considerations for various aspects of the Information Technology (IT) environment; here are the tips you need to optimize both hardware and application.
    • DB2 for IDS Administrators – Instructor: Bob Bernard Enjoy a guided tour of DB2 Universal Database (UDB). Learn the differences between Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) and DB2 UDB architecture, data type mapping, table creation, and indexing strategies.
    • XPS 8.4 Features and Usage – Instructor: Glen Mules Get a comprehensive introduction to the features of IBM Extended Parallel Server (XPS) Version 8.40.
    • Building and Deploying e-business Applications in Hours Using Office Connect – Instructors: Michael Dick and Omkar Nimbalkar Learn to build extremely user-friendly business productivity applications with IBM e-business technologies.
    • Financial Applications Using Time Series Data – Instructor: James Verwaayen Using practical examples from investment banking (centering on (portfolio risk, returns, volatilities), we’ll explore how Time Series data can bolster your financial applications. Learn how to, utilizing Excel, invoke user-defined routines in the IBM Informix Dynamic Server engine that manipulate TimeSeries and Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) data types and functions.

Enroll today, as these classes tend to fill up quickly!!! For more info, please go to:

http://www.ibm.com/services/learning/conf/us/dm/preconf_informix.html

New IBM Advocate to the IIUG Board – Welcome Mohan Natraj

Mohan Natraj, IBM Data Management Solutions’ Worldwide Brand Manager for XPS and Red Brick, has replaced Meg Hilbert as IBM’s Advocate to the IIUG Board of Directors. As such, Mohan has full voting rights and shares equal responsibilities with other Board members.

A 5-year veteran of Informix, Mohan has held both engineering and management positions. His career at Informix started as the Manager for OEM engineering in the XPS group, which quickly included the engineering operations for the entire XPS development team. Mohan’s past experiences in partner management and customer services management at Sequent helped him build strong relationships with such key hardware partners as HP, SUN, IBM, Compaq and Siemens.

In his third year at Informix, Mohan concentrated on the product management area for XPS; while an active member of the Arrowhead strategy team, he also managed an engineering team. Mohan’s responsibilities expanded into Marketing in years four and five. His key focus this past year has been Informix loyalty at all levels.

Mohan said to the IIUG Board: “As the IBM Advocate for the IIUG, I hope to bring more clarity into the way IBM works, enabling the Board to be more effective in influencing and managing the information flow in and out to the user group communities from IBM. My goal also is to work on increasing the IIUG membership.”

Mohan, welcome to the team!

Webcast – IUC Highlights & Announcements – 18 September

Mark your calendar: 18 September! IIUG and IBM will co-host a webcast titled ever so aptly: “Informix – Future Visions: A Follow-Up on the Informix User Conference and Recent Product Announcements”.

Join IIUG board member Ron Flannery and IBM representatives and participate in the question and answer session. Your valuable feedback helps IIUG represent your interests and advocate to IBM.

More information will soon be available at /resources/webcasts/

Free Querix 4GL Development Suite Informix & DB2 for IIUG Members

All IIUG registered members attending a Querix’s presentation at IUC’02 or at the exhibition booth will be awarded a voucher for Hydra V4 for Informix & IBM-DB2, including 18 months technical support and upgrade service.

Querix will exhibit their latest products, including Hydra V4, at IUC’02 Booth 481. Their conference session, titled “Modernize and Migrate Your 4GL, ESQL/C and NewEra Applications”, will take place on Monday, 10 September, in Room 201D.

IIUG members not able to attend the show may request Querix’s latest development tools for Informix, including an extended 18 months free technical support and upgrade service. Again, this offer is only valid for registered IIUG members. Organizations using 4GL applications or developing 4GL applications for their own purpose are entitled, as a one time special offer, to receive any number of compilers and concurrent client runtime licenses.

To make your request, please send e-mail to Request4Querix@IIUG.org, providing your IIUG membership address and e-mail address.

Please note that this is a good faith offer, subject to certain limitations and restrictions. IIUG does not implicitly or explicitly endorse any third party product. For more information on Querix’s Hydra V4, please visit http://www.querix.com.

New IBM Offers for Informix & U2 Customers

IBM has recently added a web page to promote new programs for Informix customers and partners. Find the latest special offers at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/offers/#informix.

Check out “SteelEye”, a high-availability protection offering for Informix-based database applications, near the bottom of the new web page.

Informix CSDK Downloads Coming to IIUG’s Member Area

Courtesy of IBM Data Management Solutions, the IIUG Member Area will have CSDK 2.50, 2.60 and 2.70 for a variety of operating systems available for download by September end. Keep an eye on http://www.iiug.org for updated information.

Forum 2002 (USA’s Eastern Seaboard) – Software Contributions Requested

The Washington Area Informix User Group (WAIUG), the New England Informix User Group (NEIUG) and the Southeast (Atlanta) Informix User Group (SEIUG) are sponsoring a technical conference and forum November 8-9, 2002 in Falls Church, Virginia. At Forum 2000, we had 230 participants, 16 speakers and 18 exhibitors. Participants will receive a complimentary software CD.

We seek new and novel software contributions; these will appear on the CD, along with software authored by many of the familiar comp.databases.informix contributors. Software should either pertain to Informix or be useful to someone working with Informix. If you have written a utility that will benefit our membership, by all means share it!

Please submit your contribution to Peter Wages [pmwages@vzavenue.net], or, if you would like your submission to appear in the IIUG software repository (http://www.iiug.org), please send it to Walt Hultgren [software@iiug.org]. All software on the IIUG Web site will be included on the CD.

For more information on Forum 2002, please visit /waiug or those interested in exhibiting may contact Andrea [andrea@advancedatatools.com].

Useful Links

Note: Thanks to a suggestion by an IIUG member, this section has been improved to show both the name of each link and the URL. Keep the ideas coming!

IBM Informix Homepage: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/
Informix Product Family News: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/news/
Informix Today – Subscription & Archive: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/informixtoday/
IBM Informix Support Site: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/support
Informix Developer Zone: http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/zones/informix/
Data Management Certification Program: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2/skills/cert.html
Informix Page Within IBM PartnerWorld for Developers: http://www.developer.ibm.com/data/informindex.php
Recent Data Management Product Announcements: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/launch/
Upcoming IBM US Conferences: http://www.ibm.com/services/learning/conf/
Bad Press on Nasty Informix Competitors: http://www-3.ibm.com/software/data/news/competitors.html

Closing and Credits

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between IBM and its worldwide user community. IIUG now exceeds 15,000 members and enjoys the support and commitment of IBM’s Data Management division. Key programs include local user groups and special interest groups, which we promote and assist from launch through growth.

Sources: IIUG Board of Directors
Editors: Fred Hubbard and David Smith, IIUG Board of Directors

For comments, please send an email to ug@iiug.org.

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Categorized as Insider

By Vicente Salvador

Board member since 2014, a user since 1989 and Informix fan. I'am software architect which allow me to combine technical and business skills.