IIUG Insider (Issue #137) November 2011

Highlights: IBM Informix goes to the University; Learned by over 4K students and still counting

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:

 


Editorial Back to top

2011 is coming towards its end. The warehouse accelerator and Genero are both great features. From a technological point of view Informix is still way ahead. Unfortunately the world has not realized it yet. Although sales are growing we still have a long way to go. I am staying with Informix. I hope it is the same with all the IIUG Insider readers. I am hoping for a new major release in 2012. I’m sure all of us are.

In the meantime we are preparing for the IIUG Informix conference in San Diego. For the first time we are going west. But this conference will have much more than a new location. We added two new tracks, a Business Track targeted towards managers and decision makers as well as a Solution Track that illustrates new solutions and uses of Informix.

Whether you have been to one of the IIUG Informix conferences before or not, do not miss the 2012 conference. Registration is open. Register before January 15, 2012 and receive a $130 discount off the regular price of registration. IIUG members can save an additional $100.

In the highlight section following this editorial you can read about the use of Informix for database courses at the University of Zagreb. Students at universities are the future of Informix. If you know about a university in your local geography that is a candidate for the Informix academic initiative, please send me the information.

Last but not least, THIS JUST IN – Informix 11.70 xC4 Developer Edition is now available free to all IIUG members. This is the Ultimate Edition function but with a limit of 20 processes for educational purposes only.

Happy download.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor


Highlights Back to top

IBM Informix goes to the University; Learned by over 4K students and still counting

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Louis T Cherian

Meet Dr. Mirta Baranovic, Head of Applied Computing Department, School of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

What is the connection between Dr. Mirta Baranovic and Informix?

Dr. Mirta Baranovic started developing a passion for Informix in the early eighties, bringing Informix to the University of Zagreb and using it as the basis of her database courses. In fact, more than 4,000 database students have taken her classes over the years.

When asked “why Informix?”, her reply is simple – “Love at first sight”. She gives a lot of credit to the architecture of Informix which is, in her words, “brilliant and modern”. From an academic’s point of view, there is another compelling reason for liking Informix – the fact that the concepts in Informix are clear and simple, and a student can easily grab those concepts. And thanks to the way Informix is built, it requires little or no effort to run.

In addition to these reasons, a key strategic relationship with an Informix business partner in the region further strengthened this relationship. It is a fact that although students had the option of using the other products, Informix has been and continues to be a popular choice. It’s indeed a pleasure to know how Informix is playing an important role in shaping up the career of thousands of students across Croatia.

The unmatchable features of Informix that came up in my conversation with Dr. Mirta Baranovic, include:

  • Reliability
  • Quality of architecture
  • Clarity of concepts

All these qualities add up to make Informix a preferable choice for Dr. Mirta Baranovic.

This is a rare testimony for Informix, where Informix is making a difference in teaching many generations of students, the fundamental database concepts. I am not sure how many other products can make such claims.

I sincerely thank Dr. Mirta Baranovic for giving me the opportunity to learn about her work, and Stuart Litel for introducing me to Dr. Mirta.

If you would like to know more about Dr. Mirta Baranovic and the work she does, you can write to her at mirta.baranovic@fer.hr.

To know more about the IBM Informix product family visit http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/.

If you would like to stay on top of all the latest on Informix, like us on facebook http://on.fb.me/IBMInformix.

Until next time,

Louis


Conference corner Back to top

Registration for the 2012 IIUG Informix Conference is open!

Please join us at our new location April 22 – 25 in San Diego, California

The 2012 conference will continue to provide the quality you are familiar with including: Sunday in-depth tutorials, 3 full days of conference seminars with over 80 topics to choose from, Hands-on labs and valuable networking opportunities. This conference will introduce several new speakers, offering new and relevant topics related to using IBM Informix to meet your training needs.

Register by the Early Bird date of January 15, 2012 and receive a $130 discount off the regular price of registration. IIUG members can save an additional $100. You can make the most of your $230 savings, and get more out of the conference, by applying your savings to one or more of the tutorials offered on Sunday April 22. One half-day tutorial is $175 or you can attend two half-day tutorials or one full-day tutorial for $275.

Reinforce your professional skills and distinguish yourself in today’s competitive environment by becoming IBM Certified. IBM Informix certification testing will be available during this year’s conference at no cost to attendees. Become certified in areas of Optimization, Tuning, Administration and 4GL programming. Test in one or more disciplines while attending the conference.

Still haven.t read enough to justify attending the 2012 IIUG Informix Conference? Check the Justification document for a list of additional reasons to attend. The Conference, including seminar content, tutorials, certification testing and the opportunity to speak with Informix-specific professionals, is definitely a bargain when considering where to invest your 2012 training dollars.

See you at the conference!

2012 IIUG Conference Planning Committee

Click here to learn more about the conference

Follow IIUG 2012 on Facebook and Twitter


Sponsors corner Back to top

Advanced DataTools Informix Remote DBA/Support Offering

Remote Technical and DBA support from Advanced DataTools helps small, medium and enterprise installations maximize their IBM Informix database performance and uptime while minimizing costs and overhead. We can help resolve and/or prevent the worst technical problems you could imagine!

Advanced DataTools’ staff of highly experienced, certified IBM Informix consultants are well trained in all levels of database performance and optimization. This allows us to offer our customers IBM maintenance and support contracts on most versions of Informix Dynamic Server, on any platform/operating system.

Top experts in the field, Art Kagel and Lester Knutsen, manage and support our team of certified IBM Informix consultants. Art and Lester each have over 28 years of Informix DBA experience and both have received the IIUG Directors Award, and the Inaugural Data Champion award by IBM.

For more information: http://www.advancedatatools.com/Solutions/Support.html


Developer corner Back to top

Informix Chat with the Lab

Topic: Informix Support for the Popular Columnar Databases
Speakers: Jerry Keesee – Director, IBM Informix Database Development (IBM)
Uday Kale (IBM)
Date: Thursday, Dec 15, 2011
Time: 8:30 AM Pacific
10:30 AM Central
11:30 AM Eastern
4:30 PM London
5:30 PM Frankfurt and Paris
10:00 PM India

This chat highlights the IBM Informix Warehouse Accelerator that adds support for columnar databases in Informix warehouse environments. Participants will see how they can achieve excellent performance benefits with the in-memory data storage provided by Informix.

Presentation material will be available at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/ifmxchatwithlab/Home prior to the event.

Register for this event at https://events.webdialogs.com/register.php?id=b7700f7777&l=en-US

For questions about this event, contact the host at: mckeithe@us.ibm.com.


Informix news Back to top

Database Trends and Applications

Efficient Vehicle Tracking System Software Solution with Informix Dynamic Server
By Vaibhav Dantale – Posted Nov 10, 2011 – November 2011 Issue
http://bit.ly/vpA2p0

Articles by Philip Howard around Informix

Informix revived: An interesting article by by Philip Howard from Bloor Research summarizing the IBM Informix story
http://bit.ly/t9ND8u

Philip Howard of Bloor Research mentions IBM Informix in the context of “breakthrough and instrumented applications” in his latest article. Read the complete story here
http://bit.ly/rzSrxq

Bloor Research highlights Informix for Big Data (time series)
http://www.bloorresearch.com/analysis/11732/big-data-real-world-quantcast-p2.html

Keshava Murthy’s Blog

Comparison of Oracle Exalytics with Informix Warehouse accelerator in (Architect, IBM) words
http://ibm.co/qv3CsQ

Market Watch

Ecologic Analytics Boosts Meter Data Management with IBM Informix Software
http://bit.ly/MWIFmx

Source Wire

SurveyDMS enables dynamic, collaborative access to survey project data and document management Fusion242 partners with Oninit and Vissensa to enable first implementation of a cloud-based Informix database solution
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=67754

Article on IBM.com

IBM Data Studio helps Informix database developers and administrators to be more productive and collaborative. IBM Data Studio, a no-charge solution provides a development environment for Informix as well as other data servers both inside and outside the IBM portfolio. In its latest release, IBM Data Studio consolidates features previously found in Optim Development Studio. Get more details here
http://bit.ly/IBMDSI


Support corner Back to top

How to run onbar point-in-time (PIT) redirected restore when source and target machines are in different time zones?

The onbar point-in-time restore enables you to restore the database server to the state it was in at a particular point in time. In general onbar point-in-time restore is a straight forward process, as long as backup and restore performed on same machine. However, in case of point-in-time redirected restore you need to consider the time differences between source and target machines manually.

In real life situation, you might take a backup of an instance in one time zone, and need to restore that backup using the onbar -t option (PIT) on a machine with different time zone. Move the onbar emergency boot file (ixbar) from source machine to target and restore with onbar -t option is not enough. You need to manually adjust the value for onbar -t option to the local time while performing the PIT redirected restore.

First, you should know the time zone that ixbar file was created on source machine. Then manually adjust the time value of onbar -t option that you specify. Here is an example which makes it easy to understand.

You take a backup on source machine at 2 PM Central Time (CT) on Nov 15 (2011-11-15 14:00:00) and restoring that backup on a machine in Pacific Time (PT). You need to copy the ixbar file from source machine to target and consider the time difference between CT and PT time zone, which 2 hours. So, you must and specify 12 PM as PIT for the backup that was taken at 2 PM CT. The restore command will be:


    onbar -r -t "2011-11-15 12:00:00"

-Manjula Panthagani


Informix resources Back to top

Informix blogs and things


Calendar of events Back to top

December – 2011
Date Event Location Contact
1-2 Washington Area Informix User Group Technical Roadshow Washington DC Lester Knutsen

 


Useful links Back to top

/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. The 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.
Editors: Gary Ben-Israel

For comments, please send an email to gary@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.