IIUG Insider (Issue #84) June 2007

Highlights: Informix radio, IIUG Conference 2008 Save the Date, Cheetah news and more…

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.

Contents:

Now. Turn the page. hit the “Pg Dn” key. Click down the page. Whatever rocks your boat but read this issue of the IIUG Insider and then write me a note (david@iiug.org). Do it NOW. 🙂 🙂 🙂

 


Editorial Back to top

Cheetah rulz!

It finally happened. The Cheetah was unleashed for the world to see… well sort of. What we have had has been stage one of the unleashing. Like a long magic trick, IBM covered up the old (and very good) version 10, spent a good 18 months pouring in their Informix brains and, like any good performer, giving us peeks at the new features and functionality. Then, in dramatic fashion, uncovered the “beast” in the 12th of June. Now they are releasing the cage doors and soon it will be ours, to try to tame.

And this time there was no yawn from the press. No. Instead the press has seen and understood the implications of this release. They have picked up on the fact that IBM is taking this great database to the market and going hard after market share. They understand that IBM is signaling it’s strong commitment to the Informix community. For developers and for DBA’s this is great news. Being an Informix guru is now a coveted title and will continue to be. Your skill’s, which you once thought may have been a liability, are now coming back into demand. Informix is hot!!!!

And that has meant another change as well. 2008 will see the re-establishment of the Informix Conference as a stand alone event. Planning for the 1st, stand alone Informix conference this millennium, run by the IIUG, is in full steam. Building on the very successful Informix Forums, run out of Washington and Atlanta, this conference will be a huge milestone in the continued development of the great Informix community. The IIUG conference team is planning a fabulous event in the very heart of Cheetah country, Lenexa, Kansas. Targeted for the US spring, this conference will be a global event bringing the best of Informix developers and administrators together.

But… like the Cheetah launch itself… I have to leave it there. But don’t worry. There will be plenty to say about this conference over the next few months. And whether you live in the US or Europe or New Zealand or Asia, this will be a ‘must attend’ event.

Enough said?

Not quite. Before you do anything else, click this link! It’s good. http://www.iiug.tv

Now. Read on down. You will find information about IDS and links to training, to product information, to new conferences, radio, tv, news, and a whole lot of other stuff.

This is Cheetah land 🙂

Kind regards,

David Fraser
Cheetahman
IIUG Board of Directors
david@iiug.org


IIUG Conference 2008 – Save the date! Back to top

The
International Informix Users Group
Conference

Save the Date: April 27 – 30, 2008

Overland Park, Kansas, USA

Five miles from the major metropolitan area of Lenexa, KS, home of much of the IBM Informix Development Lab and Support Staff.

The International Informix Users Group has signed a contract to hold the 2008 Users Conference at the Overland Park Marriott. Overland Park is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri and the hotel is just down the street from the IBM Development Lab in Lenexa, Kansas, home of most of the Informix Development and Support Staff.

The event will be a three full day event packed with at least four tracks of all Informix sessions and a day of tutorials leading up to the event. The full conference price will be around the $500 price tag for early registration and around $200 for the tutorials on the Sunday prior to the event.

The team selected to run the conference from the International Informix Users Group will be made up of the best possible IIUG members around. Leading the team will be Cindy Lichtenauer, IIUG Board member and coordinator of the past three IIUG/IDUG events, Walt Hultgren, founder and first president of the IIUG and past winner of the IIUG Directors Award, and James Edmiston, past IIUG Board Member, past winner of the IIUG Directors Award, member of the committee for the IIUG/IDUG conference for the past two years and of the Washington DC forum committee for a number of past years.

Working with these team leaders will be Kernoal Stephens, IIUG Board Member who worked on the committee for the IIUG/IDUG conference for the past two years, Tammy Frankforter, who worked on the committee for the IIUG/IDUG conference for the past two years, John Carlson, winner of the Best Speaker Award for the 2006 IIUG/IDUG Conference, Tom Beebe, who worked on the past few Washington DC Forums committees and System Administrator of the IIUG.ORG server, and Bruce Simms, long time IIUG member and head of the St. Louis, MO Local Informix User Group.

As we announced to the IIUG membership last month, the IIUG will no longer be doing a joint user conference with IDUG. We wish our friends at IDUG the very best, but the time has come to do our own event. We will be working closely with IBM and the user community to select the best speakers in the world, including key IBM executives as keynote speakers.

Watch the IIUG web site and the IIUG Insider for more information as it becomes available.


Cool stuff Back to top

Informix on the radio!

Well sort of…

Want to hear the Informix gurus talk about Cheetah? Then you need to turn in to this great site… http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/informix/podcast/.

Topics include:

  • Gary Proctor talking about the new market opportunities for Business Partners.
  • Our own Stuart Litel talking about the Informix and the IIUG. Go Stuie :).
  • Jerry Keesee the Director of R&D for Informix giving an over view of Cheetah.
  • Guy Bowerman blogging on about IDS on the Windows Vista and the new 64bit Windows port project.
  • Cary Wahlmeier talking about Mach 11 and the new Continuous Availability features in Cheetah.
  • Sandor Szabo talks about implementing Informix on Linux and the business value this creates.

Coming soon are:

  • Keshava Murthy on the new XML support in Cheetah.
  • Howard Glaser talking about configurable configuration for IDS.
  • Alan Caldara discussing the implementation of the Open GeoSpatial Consortium® Web Feature service in IDS. This will be a ‘must listen to’ for developers working with IDS in that spatial and geodetic datablade space.

In case you missed it… IIUG TV!

Yep. Check out the *stars* on http://www.iiug.tv. An international cast of acclaimed experts and movie stars give their views on Informix, IDS and the Cheetah. Don’t pussy foot around. Get into this. It is probably going to be the highest downloaded group of videos that the IIUG has put out yet.

Great success at the Taiwan Informix Users Group

Chi-Ying Shen has this to say…

“We are happy to share with you the result of TWIUG first conference.

  • TWIUG had 150 Informix users from 91 companies attending the first users conference.
  • There were three from the press showed up to the event from Taiwan major IT media, including CNET Taiwan.
  • The TWIUG website has been activate since 5/29″

Ed. 150 users turned up. That is a fantastic result and shows the international appeal of IDS. Our congratulations go to the great team at Cobrasonic Software Inc who put this together. Have a look at http://www.cobrasonic.com/news/news_20070530.html for more news on this event.

Well done team.

The official IBM Cheetah (IDS 11.1) announcement

Get it here http://www-306.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/0/897/ENUS207-130/ENUS207130.PDF. It is actually quite good.


Conference corner Back to top

Missed the early bird special. DUH. Act now and get the “after early bird” special.

Register Today! IBM Information On Demand 2007, October 14-19, 2007, Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas, NV. The premier information management event for business and IT professionals. Select from over 600 sessions: a 2 1/2 day business leadership track with 120 sessions and a 4 1/2 day technical track with 500 sessions.

Save US$300. International Informix Users Group discount registration available through August 15th.

To enroll, visit http://www.ibm.com/events/InformationOnDemand and use promotion code LVUFMX under the “company information” section.

The fresh AIR is going to New York

Hard to believe???? Well… be in New York on the 25th July to see for your selves.

We have scheduled a meeting for July 25th (that’s a Wednesday) at the IBM New York City Office. Please join us!! Come and meet your local Support Team, IBM Developers and Management to find out what is new and exciting at IBM! The most exciting thing happening this year is the release of Informix Dynamic Server, or CHEETAH! There will be a lot to discuss about Cheetah at this meeting.

So… What will Cheetah offer you?? A.I.R.

A – Agile (Scalability, Extensibility, Web Location Based Services)
I – Invisible (Embed-ability, small footprint, Admin Free)
R – Resilient ( Global Availability, High Availability, Security)

Agenda:

Agile – Performance enhancements in Cheetah, application development

If you thought IDS was fast now, just wait until you get your hands on the latest updates that deliver peak performance to your applications. Learn what has been added in IDS Cheetah (and what you’ve been missing if you are still on IDS 7.31). Find out the implementation details so you can take advantage of these for your solutions.

Agile – Extending IDS further with Location Based Services and Basic TextSearch

Do you Web 2.0? Find out more about how you can take advantage of a Services Oriented Architecture to easily deliver location based information to your applications. IDS extensibility and the new Web Feature Services in Cheetah make this possible. The new Basic Text Search that is included in IDS Cheetah will also be covered.

Invisible – Enter the “Administration-Free Zone”

If you like the ‘hands-free’ reliability of IDS, you’re gonna love the new tools that make administration even easier. The new OpenAdmin Tool for IDS provides a GUI based view of all of your data server activities – starting with a map of server locations that can drill down to the detail of an individual SQL statement. Other new features allow automatic scheduling to keep your weekends free.

Resilient – Availability Solutions in IDS “Cheetah”

IDS has long provided multiple robust solutions to support high availability of your data. IDS “Cheetah” builds on those strengths with new options to design the right availability solution to meet your needs. Learn how customers achieve 99.999% availability (less than 5 minutes downtime per year), and how these new choices can improve performance and provide workload management for easy scalability.

Resilient and Secure – Protecting your Information Assets

Learn how the new security features in IDS, including Label Based Access Control (LBAC), can help you protect the information assets in your IDS databases. New levels of control will make it easier to isolate protected information to meet regulatory compliance requirements and gain competitive advantage.

Want to know more???? Just ask air@iiug.org or keep tuned to the IIUG homepage at http://www.iiug.org.


Developer corner Back to top

SQL Alchemy support for Informix

SQL Alchemy is a Phyton Object to Relational tool. 0.3.7 is out and has a huge number of improvements and fixes. But most important it now supports Informix.

/url/alchemy.html

What is new in Cheetah

Check this out:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0705saraswatipura/

It has the full list of what’s new. Essential reading to IDS geek heads. In fact if you don’t read this then you have missed the point. (In a kind and positive way) 🙂

BTW. Want to get your name out there as a innovative developer. Get your great ideas published here first. Where else can you tell over 20000 like minded people about your cool stuff.


Informix publications and other cool stuff Back to top

New Informix IDS case study just published

With the title “Verizon keeps customer service high with a resilient, flexible information infrastructure from IBM” you might just wonder what it is all about. But it is about how and why Verizon uses Informix IDS

Did you see this last month and read it? Hope so, because there is no excuse not to. And…If you have management that is still dithering about IDS as their long term strategic data server, then get them to read this.

/articles/Verizon_Informix.pdf

New Informix IDS 11.1 Book

Read this from author Mr Carlton Doe:

IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11.
The Next Generation in OLTP Data Server Technology

Because IBM loves IDS so much, they wanted to publish a book extolling the virtues of the new release, what was in it and why customers should buy it. IBM produced 3,000 copies for a first printing. Almost all of them were distributed within the first week to customers, IBMers and other interested parties. They are pursuing translation into Chinese and Russian. They are also considering a second printing in English. You can get your copy by contacting your local IBM sales or technical sales rep and hounding them until you get one. 🙂 🙂 🙂

The book will be distributed at IOD and other events going on around IDS 11.

As far as what’s in it, it contains a broad overview of the data server and the major features in the new release from a business and technical perspective. Not all the features are in there because of a restriction on the number of pages but the big stuff is there.

Ed. Now I know Carlton. This is a great book written by a great guy and advocate of IDS and you need to get a copy. Do what you can to get one. I will publish all stories about how you had to beg, bash or bully your IBM rep into giving you one. Ring then now and ask.

New Informix IDS Redbook on Replication

For those who want to replicate, here is how:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247319.html

A must for CIO’s, DBA’s and university students who have lost their way. 🙂

New Informix Technical sales certification

IBM has announced that “M18 IBM Information Management Informix Dynamic Server Technical Sales Mastery v1” is available. 🙂

Technical Sales Mastery Tests are designed to validate the software sales knowledge of Business Partner technical sales representatives. These tests focus on a how our IBM software products perform and the technical value to IBM’s customers. They are not certification tests, which are designed to validate skills needed in a specific job-role, however, mastery tests help to assure an individual has achieved a foundation of knowledge and understanding of a subject matter. For more information visit:

A fabulous new download is coming… and it is exclusive to the IIUG

And I can not tell you what it is. Sorry. Stuart said that if I told you, he would have to shoot you. 🙂

But I know what it is and you are just going to love it. You need to stay tuned to the IIUG website and/or read the blasts that we send out. Please note… This is BIGGER THAN BEN HUR.

So don’t say that you didn’t know that something was afoot. Keep checking out the IIUG home page http://www.iiug.org

Now accepting nominations for the IOD Innovation Awards

IBM will be unveiling the first Global Information on Demand Innovation Awards at the Information on Demand Conference October 14-19 this year in Las Vegas, Nevada. The awards program is designed to honor best-in-class applications and solutions from among IBM Information Management and Business Partner customers. So, if you or your customers are using IBM-based solutions to gain competitive advantage, improve efficiencies, and deliver new possibilities through breakthrough applications, submit your nominations today!

https://www-926.ibm.com/events/im/filenetawards07.nsf/$StaticContent/Welcome

All entries must be received by 5:00pm PDT on July 31.

IIUG website upgrades UNLEASHED at Conference

The IIUG Board of Directors continues to try and simplify your life this time with great new features on our web page. At the May 2007 conference, I (Kate Tomchik) gave a presentation on the changes we have undergone since the IOD conference in October, 2006. A few features I pointed out that were added last year included:

  1. The Cheetah ICON on the right side of the web page now jumps to a page of articles and various other Cheetah related items.
  2. A Strategic Letter from Ambuj is now on the top and center for easy access to everyone – we even have an updated letter for 2007.
  3. Sponsors that rotate when clicked will now take you to a full sponsor page (in case you are too slow to catch the one you wanted).
  4. FINALLY – We allow users to log in through their own defined user id. You know longer have to remember your member number as the system will do this for you!

That was just a start, or should I say the end of 2006. The new page was revealed with these new features.

  1. The page sports a cleaner, brighter look with an easier to read font.
  2. The new menus use intuitively understood tabs for second level menu items.
  3. All pages will be formatted to use the same layouts shown on these pages. A green header line with the list of links within the page will always appear at the top, and linked headers will have lines above and below with “Back to Top” on the right.
  4. The “Show background images” button appears now on every page.
  5. Neat new arrows on the left and the right of the NEWS section will page you through news articles – old and new.
  6. AND the cross-browser java script menu is gone. This lets web pages load faster and avoids browser compatibility problems.

You probably have noticed since the Cheetah Launch we now have a few pictures coloring the page as well. Be sure to check the web page daily as the number of Cheetah articles is incredibly huge. If you have any articles to post, or comments about the web site, please email me at webcontent@iiug.org.

Kate Tomchik
Website mistress 🙂

Fitrix announces release of version 5

Fitrix version 5 Business applications and RAD/CASE Tools now support Four J’s Genero. Fourth Generation Software announces the release of version 5 of its Fitrix Accounting and Distribution Series software for small and mid-size businesses (see http://www.fitrix.com for details). Fitrix includes full source code, RAD/CASE Tool, IDS v 10, Genero and 8 Accounting and Distribution modules and is designed for easy and unlimited customization.

Look for Cheetah support in the near future…


Informix news Back to top

Don’t miss the latest news about IDS Cheetah

There is so much news, in the news about Cheetah you would have to be dead, or blind to have missed it. Ok Ok. So IDS is so easy to use a dead blind person could easily do it, with one hand tied behind their back. Anyway… that is not the point. The point is this… If you want to read the news about Cheetah then go here:

/cheetah/CheetahNews.php

And if you have management that are still bleating that they think Informix is dead and they don’t know what is happening then tell them to go look there as well. Then tell me who they are and I will send over some heavies… and believe me… we have some heavy heavies to send.

The reality is that the Cheetah launch has been huge. It has been picked up by all the major press lists. There is no reason for someone not to know. It even hit the New Zealand IT press.


IIUG Board Back to top

Upcoming IIUG Board of Directors meeting

The Board will be formally meeting at the IBM IOD event in October at Los Vegas. Have you got ideas that you want bought up to the Board? If so then send them to me and I will make sure they get on the agenda (I write the agenda) 🙂

So participate. Let us know what you think and how this great organisation can help you. Just email me at david@iiug.org.

Cheers,

David Fraser

For the observant ones out there, this is the same message as I used last month. I had one response, from a young lady down Chicago way. So… either no one reads this section of the rag or you are all very very happy. Let me know which one it is.


Calendar of events Back to top

July – 2007
Date Event Location Contact
25 New York City Area Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Office, New York City Cindy Lichtenauer
September – 2007
Date Event Location Contact
13 Southeast Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day Atlanta, Georgia Kate Tomchik
October – 2007
Date Event Location Contact
14-19 IBM Information On Demand 2007 Las Vegas, NV

Useful links Back to top

In response to your input, we have created a page on the IIUG web site containing all the links we used to include. Please find it at:

/quicklinks.html


Closing and credits Back to top

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between its worldwide user community and IBM. IIUG’s membership database now exceeds 25,000 entries 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
IBM Corp.
Cobrasonic
Editors: David Fraser
Gary Ben-Israel
Stuart Litel

For comments, ideas, information, more ideas, gossip, lies and general chatter, please send an email to david@iiug.org.

Published
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.