IIUG Insider (Issue #80) February 2007

Highlights: Next Generation IDS “Cheetah” Enters Open Beta Testing

Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Insider! Designed for IIUG members and Informix user group leaders, this publication contains timely and relevant information for the IBM Informix community.

On February IBM launched the IDS 11 open beta. IDS 11, code name Cheetah, which is planned to be GA in the July 2007 time frame, is a giant step for Informix and Informix users. As a participant in the closed IDS Beta that started in October 2006, I can assure you it is going to be a great product. If you haven’t already done so, consider joining the open beta – you’ll learn more about the product and help make it better.

The IIUG board has not yet managed to have its first board meeting. We hope to have it in March. We will report to you about the board meeting and our plans in the February Insider.

I hope to meet many of you in San Jose May 6-10 2007. Until then my best wishes to you all.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
gary@iiug.org

Highlights

Next Generation IDS “Cheetah” Enters Open Beta Testing

ARMONK, NY – 14 Feb 2007: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it is teaming with AMD and Novell to create an integrated Linux offering built around IBM’s next generation Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) data server, code-named “Cheetah.” IBM also revealed that Cheetah has now entered an open beta testing for customers and business partners.

he new Linux offering will combine IDS Cheetah, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell and IBM xSeries 3105 highly-scalable servers powered by second-generation AMD Opteron 1000 Series processors to provide new availability and security features in a low cost solution to help small and medium businesses (SMBs) meet their critical needs.

“The IDS data server provides an environment with low administration needs, which in turn lowers the total cost of ownership and frees up DBAs to focus more attention on their overall Information on Demand strategy,” said Arvind Krishna, vice president IBM data servers. “IDS Cheetah will build upon the IDS history of reliability with a broad spectrum of high-availability options for business continuity and advanced security. Information has become a strategic asset for companies, IDS allows companies to truly leverage information.”

Scheduled for release in 2007, IDS Cheetah is designed to offer new capabilities to help customers meet their changing data management goals by enabling users to extract more value from their business information.

“Data is at the heart of every business, and being able to access it efficiently and reliably is paramount to success,” said Terri Hall, vice president, Commercial Solutions and Alliances, AMD. “The combination of IDS Cheetah and the xSeries 3105 powered by AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture will provide customers with a cost-effective, high-availability solution to meet their critical data management requirements.”

Cheetah features significant enhancements to application development that are aimed at helping customers accelerate time-to-value for new applications and in porting existing applications to IDS. Cheetah also will offer extended support for applications collaboration and integration for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Also included in the new version will be enhanced support for hierarchical data structures, built-in flexible text searches unstructured documents and enhanced support for datatypes support for distributed queries across multiple IDS instances.

“IDS Cheetah’s support for open source applications development combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server’s high performance and reliability will allow us to deliver to customers a solution to maximize their application investments and to benefit from the vast application resources available,” said Roger Levy, Novell vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions.

Early Cheetah customers include ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion, the technology competence center of Germany’s largest private television company the ProSiebenSat.1 Group, who plan to utilize the next-generation IDS data server to help manage their comprehensive range of TV, mobile and multimedia production services. With the IDS software simplifying and automating many database management tasks, the company is able to employ only three database administrators.

“As a participant of the ‘Cheetah’ closed beta program, we are impressed with the new capabilities that IDS will offer,” said Markus Holzbauer, senior database administrator for ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion. “Specially, the high reliability and superb transaction throughput really appealed to us. With the development of ‘Cheetah’, IBM makes it clear that IDS continues to be a key strategic product in its portfolio.”

IDS is a strategic element of IBM’s Information Management software portfolio and delivers exceptionally fast OLTP performance, high reliability and low cost administration. IDS is a leading integrated data server in many market segments such as retail, telecommunications, healthcare, government, banking/finance, entertainment, and SMB. IDS also delivers a broad spectrum of high availability features to ensure business continuity for customers from SMB businesses to global enterprises. The continued popularity and use of IDS is illustrated by the fact that in North America alone, eight of the top ten retailers and twenty of the top twenty-five supermarkets use IDS.

vThe new IDS Cheetah Linux bundle is expected to be available through the ValueNet business partner program beginning in 2007. Specific terms on the program are being worked out and will be announced at product launch.

Customers, developers and partners can find out more about IDS at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/new.

Conference corner

Mark your calendar!! For May 6-10, 2007

Mark your calendar for the first week of May next year, and plan on attending the IDUG/IIUG North American Conference in San Jose California.

This will be the BEST technical conference ever offered to Informix users by the IIUG. We will be hosting FOUR full tracks of the latest and greatest INFORMIX ONLY technical content. These sessions will be given by Informix users, Business Partners, IBM Developers, and IBM Advanced Support.

Chance to Win a FREE Registration

For the second year running IDUG North America will offer the FREE Registration Raffle. Enter today for a chance to attend IDUG 2007 – North America for free! All entries are due by March 12. The raffle winner will be announced March 15, 2007.

/url/idug_raffle.html

Here are just a few samples from more than 55 technical sessions on the schedule:

Exploiting Role Separation in IDS – Jonathan Leffler, IBM
Put yourself on the map with Google Maps API, DB2/Informix, and PHP on Linux- Martin Lurie of IBM and Aron Lurie
Using the Onpladm Tool for Informix High-Performance Loader- John Carlson, Home Depot
Performance Tuning IDS In-Depth: The Next Generation- Art Kagel, Bloomberg LP
IDS Installations, Upgrades and Maintenance: Best Practices- Thomas Girsch, Hilton

In addition to these great technical sessions, we will also be offering 6 half-day Educational Seminars given by some of the best Informix technical experts around.

Here are a few examples:

Introduction to Java Development with IDS, by Jean-Georges Perrin
Speed and Performance in IDS, by John Miller III of IBM
Using PERL, CGI and DBI with Databases, by Darryl Priest of Piper Rudnick

Go Further! Share your experiences. Learn from what others have experienced first hand at the many networking opportunities available throughout the conference. Mingle with exhibitors in the exhibit hall. Benefit from extended face-to-face time with conference presenters and developers during the Speaker and IBM Developer Reception. Throughout the week you will be provided with many peer-to-peer networking opportunities.

One great example of networking with your peers would be the Special Interest Groups.

We are offering the following for Informix:

Informix for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
Informix on Linux
Informix Best Practices

Registration for this event is now open! Take advantage of the special early bird registration and attend IDUG/IIUG North America 2007 for only $1650.

http://conferences.idug.org/na/Registration/tabid/127/Default.aspx

Cindy Lichtenauer
IIUG Board of Directors
IIUG Conference Planning Committee

Information Management Technical Conference, Düsseldorf, Germany, May 21-25

Mark your calendar now – this is your chance to contribute and participate in the primary technical exchange and skill-building event for Information Management in Europe.

Of special interest to Informix participants:

The EMEA technical conference is delivering an expanded program of Informix sessions and activities this year. Conference sessions will include Informix topics scheduled Monday through Wednesday, and the German Informix User Group is planning additional activities on Thursday and Friday. The 2007 conference will have a full week of content for the Informix audience – just in time to learn more about the upcoming IDS ‘Cheetah’ release!

Please spread the word about this opportunity by forwarding this email to your teams, communicating on your websites, syndicating in your newsletters and including this in other communications to your teams. The submission deadline is coming up very soon, so don’t miss this opportunity to participate!

Find out more on at:

http://www.ibm.com/training/conf/europe/im

Audience: Available to Clients, Business Partners and IBMers

CALL FOR SPEAKERS

Abstracts are now being accepted for technical sessions at the conference.

The agenda, of which you will be part, is designed to offer IT executives, consultants, architects, and developers the opportunity to network and gain a complete picture of the Information Management product portfolio, while building or enhancing deep technical skills in their areas of interest. With more than 200 technical sessions across 11 tracks, it’s a great opportunity for attendees to get the best in technical education and free certification, as well as gaining access and exposure to the full spectrum of IBM Information technologies and experts.

All IT Architects, Specialists, Consultants, Developers and Instructors are invited to submit abstracts for speaking slots. Candidates for these speaking slots should understand that the primary goal of the IM Technical Conference is to offer premium education with high quality presentations to IT professionals. Additionally, we are also looking for IBM customers to share their perspective on how a leading edge solution using Information Management technology helped them to resolve a business problem in their company. Please share this with customers or individuals who can help identify customer speakers.

Important Dates

Abstracts with biography are due no later than February 16, 2007 and should be sent to abstracts@iiug.org
Notification of proposal acceptance will be made by March 2nd, 2007
Final presentations for those accepted are due by March 30th, 2007

Audience

Customers, Business Partners and IBM team members are all audiences for this event. Ensure that when submitting your abstract you specify the target audience(s) that will benefit from the presentation. This may include one or more of;

IT Architects
IT Developers including Business Application Developers, Web Application Developers, System Integrators, Application Programmers, Tools Developers & Users etc.
IT Consultants
Database Administrators

Technical Session – Structure

The event is hosted over 4.5 days and includes a total of 208 technical sessions.

Technical sessions are 1 hour in length.

Each attendee will have the opportunity to attend a total of 26 technical sessions throughout the week.

A total of 11 Technical tracks will be available so when submitting your presentation abstract ensure you identify which track your session targets. Track descriptions are available on the conference home page at:

http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/services/learning/ites.wss?pageType=page&c=a0012215

IDS (Informix Dynamic Server)/Cheetah
Architecting the On Demand Enterprise
DB2 for z/OS & DB2 Tools
DB2 Application Development
DB2 for Linux, Unix, Windows & Tools
IMS & IMS Tools
Content Management
Information Integration
Information Warehouse (BI)
Information Analysis
Master Data Management

Speaker Travel & Living Expenses

All IBMers, Customers and Business Partners selected to present will receive a complementary pass to attend the conference. This will entitle the individual to attend all conference activities/events, and will include meals provided at the conference venue. Those speakers who present a minimum of 3 times at the conference will be entitled to have their travel and lodging costs covered in addition to being provided with a free conference pass.

Submission Guidelines

All submissions must be technical in nature. The majority of the presentations should target an intermediate to advanced audience with a small number of beginner level sessions. Ensure you clearly state which audience type the submission is targeted at.

Your abstract should include session title (avoid lengthy titles), and a description what will be covered in the session (1 or 2 paragraphs). It would also be helpful to have a list of skill objectives, and prerequisite skills needed to attend the session.

Include speaker information as follows:

Biography of speaker (50 – 75 words)
Name
Title/Position
Company
Location/Address
External Phone #
IBM Tie Line (if applicable)
External e-mail address
Lotus Notes ID (if applicable)

Abstract should include:

Title
Target Audience
Audience Type
Track Name
Description – 1 or 2 paragraphs to include objectives of the session as well as prerequisite skills.

We hope you take advantage of this incredible opportunity to participate at the Information Management Technical Conference this spring.

Regards,

Cathy Elliott
Marketing Manager
IBM Information Management
cathyell@us.ibm.com

Save the date for Information On Demand 2007 Global Conference

IBM Information On Demand 2007 is the premier information management event for business and IT executives, managers, IT professionals, DBA’s and developers. Select from over 600 technical and business sessions, receive the best in technical education, free certification testing, extensive networking opportunities and access and exposure to the full breadth of IBM Information Management technologies and experts. In the product Expo Center you can talk to experts about the products, tools, and services you need from IBM and IBM Business Partners to manage your information infrastructure.

http://www.ibm.com/events/InformationOnDemand

Education

Grow Skills Early. Save Big.

Your training dollars will go further in 2007 with $500 savings on Informix public software classes scheduled in the first quarter in the U.S. What better time to attend software training when your business goals are set and your IT needs are immediate? You can enroll through March 28, 2007, in any eligible IBM publicly scheduled software classes in the U.S. and receive $500 off the tuition. At enrollment, reference priority code 6N2KJO4W to receive your discount.

/url/ibm_training_save.html

IBM Informix Education from IBM

Come to IBM to get all the latest information about the Informix product family. With courses grouped as Foundation (Basic), Level 1 (Intermediate), Level II (Advanced) and Master Series Workshop (Expert), you are certain to find the right level of Informix training to meet your needs. They are delivered in the classroom, some via e-learning and can also be customized to meet your needs. Get a window into some great skill building and certification opportunities by visiting our visit our Informix curriculum view.

/url/ibm_informix_ed.html

Subscribe to IBM Training News from IBM

Each month you can get the latest information about education and training for both hardware and software product families with sections covering more than 14 interest areas from eServers to Networking, Application Development, Cisco, Linux, Information Management, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, WebSphere, and more. Subscribe to the IBM Training News and personalize your subscription to meet your specific interests.

http://www-931.ibm.com/bin/subscriptions/walk_small_steps.cgi?cl=USEN&nid=10181

Developer corner

New Features in IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Cheetah (IDS Version 11.10)

The following new features are introduced in the February 2007 Test Run of IBM IDS Cheetah (IBM Informix Dynamic Server Version 11.10). Watch the IDS Cheetah web site for download availability of future test run releases. (http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/new)

Theme 1: Scalability, High Availability and Performance

1. Multiple Remote Standalone Secondary Servers
2. Backup and Restore to Directories with Ontape
3. Continuous Logical Log Restore
4. Encrypted Communications for HDR
5. Improved Parallelism during Backup and Restore
6. RTO Policy to Manage Server Restart
7. Non-blocking Checkpoints
8. Performance Improvements for Enterprise Replication

Theme 2: Administration Free Zone

9. SQL Administration API
10. Schedule Administrative Tasks
11. Monitor and Analyze Recent SQL Statements
12. Dynamically Change Enterprise Replication Configuration Parameters and Environment Variables
13. Rename Enterprise Replication Columns, Tables, and Databases
14. Truncate Replicated Tables
15. Improved Statistics Maintenance
16. Installation Improvements on Windows Platforms
17. Session Configuration Routines

Theme 3: Integrated Solutions

18. Named Parameters in a JDBC Callable Statement
19. Indexable Binary Data Types
20. Trigger Enhancements
21. Derived tables in the FROM Clause of Queries
22. Index Self-Join Query Plans
23. Optimizer Directives in ANSI-Compliant Joined Queries
24. Deployment Wizard
25. Enhanced Concurrency with Committed Read Isolation
26. Enhanced Data Type Support for Cross-Server Distributed Queries
27. XML Publishing
28. Index Hierarchical Data
29. Basic Text Search
30. Improved Concurrency with Private Memory Caches for Virtual Processors

For the full document go to: /cheetah/TestRunFeb07.pdf.

IBM Informix .NET Data Provider Open Beta

IDS .NET Data Provider support for the .NET Framework 2.0 is available with Beta Drop. This drop also includes performance enhancements to the provider. The open beta drops will also include IDS .NET Data Provider for .NET Framework 1.1. The performance enhancements are included in both the IDS .NET Data Providers.

In addition to the .NET Data Provider for 2.0, there is also a collection of add-ins to the Microsoft(R) Visual Studio .NET 2005 IDE. The add-ins will simplify the creation of applications that use the ADO.NET interface. IBM Database Add-Ins for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 are available with Beta drop now.

Beta Drop 2 – Delivered 01/27

Content: IDS .NET Data Provider support for the .NET Framework 2.0
IBM Database Add-Ins for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
IDS .NET Data Provider support for the .NET Framework 2.0

Beta Refresh – Planned Mid – Feb

Content: Defect fixes.

The Open beta is requires an IBM id and password (same as developerWorks) and is available at IBM Informix .NET Data Provider Open Beta website.

Support for the open will be provided via a QuickPlace that has been set-up to include the support forum other technical and educational information. Upon downloading the product from the open beta website, you will receive an email giving you access to the QuickPlace. If you have problems accessing the QuickPlace, please send a note to Paul Read (paul_read at uk dot ibm dot com)

ServerStudio 6.0 is here!

Thursday, 01 February 2007

It’s finally here and on time! AGS just released ServerStudio v6, one of the tools often used when interacting with an Informix database.

ImageI participated in the Beta / Preview program. Version 6 comes with plenty of new features, including E/R design (Entity/Relationship Diagrams) and code completion while typing in SQL commands. You can check the release notes for a complete listing all the new features.

In addition to the IDS versions it supports, JGP of the IIUG Board of Directors has also verified “it works marvelously well with Cheetah (IDS vNext)”.

More information:

* AGS ServerStudio web site: http://www.serverstudio.com

Informix news

Continuing coverage from Cheetah open beta announcement

Continuing coverage from Cheetah open beta announcement has been very positive (new coverage in bold). Additionally, the European PR teams are beginning their outreach and the AP teams begin after the Chinese New Year holiday ends. Additional Coverage is expected and we’ll continue to send out updated reports.

New Highlight quotes:

Customers have praised the company for continuing to develop IDS and for not forcing them onto IBM’s flagship DB2 databases.
IBM said the development of Cheetah shows that IDS continues to be one of its key strategic products.
IBM and its partners are testing the bundle with customers that include eight of the top ten retailers in North America and 20 of the top 25 supermarkets, all of which already use IDS.
Planned enhancements in Cheetah cover areas ranging from applications collaboration to integration with Service Oriented Architecture, support for unstructured documents, built-in flexible text searches, better support for hierarchical data structures, and faster ports of existing database applications to Informix.

Computerworld (IDG News Service): IBM releases Informix beta, preps Linux bundle
James Niccolai, February 15, 2007
/url/Computerworld_15feb07.html

February 15, 2007 (IDG News Service) — IBM has opened the public beta program for the next version of its Informix database server and announced plans for a bundled Linux package for smaller businesses.

The upgrade to IBM’s Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) is code-named Cheetah. The final version is due out sometime later this year and will offer new features for application developers, better support for hierarchical data structures and improved query capabilities across multiple instances of the database, IBM announced Thursday.

For now, customers and IBM partners can try out a beta version of the software by downloading it from http://www-306.ibm.com/software/info/ids/cheetah/index.jsp.

The company is working with Novell Inc. to offer the database in an “integrated, low-cost” package of hardware and software for small and medium-sized businesses. Due out this year, it will include Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Server and an IBM xSeries 3105 server powered by Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s Opteron 1000 Series processors, IBM said.

Pricing and other details will be announced nearer to its release.

IBM acquired Informix’s database business in 2001 for about US$1 billion. Customers have praised the company for continuing to develop IDS and for not forcing them onto IBM’s flagship DB2 databases. But some users have also been critical that IBM does little to market the software, pushing its DB2 brand instead.

IBM said the development of Cheetah shows that IDS continues to be one of its key strategic products.

The vendor is promising significant enhancements for application developers, to help get applications up and running quickly and port existing applications to IDS. Cheetah also supports the services-oriented architecture model for application integration, and comes with a new deployment wizard for minimizing the disk space required for a custom install, IBM said.

The last major upgrade to IDS, version 10, came out two years ago, in March 2005.

InfoWorld: IBM sets Cheetah into beta
Big Blue also prepares a Linux bundle of hardware and software
By: James Niccolai, February 15, 2007
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/15/HNinformixbeta_1.html

For now, customers and IBM partners can try out a beta version of the software by downloading it here.

IBM said the development of Cheetah shows that IDS continues to be one of its key strategic products.

Sources:		IIUG Board of Directors IBM Corp.
Editors:		Gary Ben Israel Stuart Litel Jean Georges Perrin

IIUG Insider (Issue #80) February 2007

Contents:

By Vicente Salvador

May – 2007
Date	Event	Location	Contact
6-10	IIUG/IDUG 2007 – North America	San Jose, CA	Cindy Lichtenauer
21-25	Information Management Technical Conference	Düsseldorf, Germany
October – 2007
Date	Event	Location	Contact
14-19	IBM Information On Demand 2007	Las Vegas, NV