Highlights: Jump start with the enhanced Informix
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:
Table of Contents
Editorial
Not much is happening with Informix since the HCL deal. I guess HCL needs time to get things going. Or, maybe it is just this time of year. For me things are very slow as well. So who am I to complain?
Hope for exciting stuff in the July issue.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
Highlights
Jump start with the enhanced Informix
This is your system
This is your system enhanced.
Learn about the new Informix enhancements.
Register for the July 13 web cast.
Title: Jump start with the enhanced Informix
Date: Thursday, July 13, 2017
Time: 12:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Duration: 1 hour
Registration: http://bit.ly/2tk9dKb
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG President’s Update
I wrote a letter that was published in last month’s IIUG Insider regarding the IBM and HCL Partnership. I hope you all had a chance to read it. In case you missed it, it is available at www.iiug.org/prezletter. I recommend you download the PDF that best fits your language of choice to see what this partnership means for Informix. In case you have any questions, drop me an email at www.iiug.org/president.
Also, it definitely looks like IIUG 2018 will be held in the October 2018 timeframe. A long time ago, when we started this process, I said it cannot be that hard to select a city. Well yes it is. You have to find dates that are available in a city that you can afford and in a hotel that has the correct number of meeting rooms available. We are down to our final list of hotels and the IIUG Board will be voting soon. We hope to have a final decision in time to make an announcement in next month’s IIUG Insider.
Finally, a lot of people have dropped me an email asking me how they can get a copy of the IIUG 2017 sessions. So, here is the secret link: www.iiug2017.org/sessions.zip. If you want a copy of the wonderful Conference guide you can find it at www.iiug2017.org/guide.pdf.
Stuart Litel
RFE corner
Just in case you are not aware, some time ago IBM created a public website to collect the requests for new features directly from users. The RFE (Requests For Enhancements) website is included in developerWorks. You can access it here.
Once you logged in with your usual IBM ID, choose “Information Management” in the Brand dropdown box and “Informix Servers” or “Client Products” in the Products dropdown box.
The interesting thing is that any request, including your request, if you place one, is submitted to be voted on. This means the RFEs that receive more votes have a greater chance to be considered by the architecture and development teams for further consideration. In other words, this IS your opportunity to provide enhancement ideas even if you are not the biggest IBM customer on the planet earth.
Some RFEs will be of great interest, others will not seem useful to you. This is why your opinion is important. Do not hesitate to vote and place comments!
The idea of the RFE corner is to provide a digest on new Informix RFEs and make those RFEs more visible and accessible for the community, so that you can vote for them in a faster and easier way. By participating actively in this website, IBM will have solid and useful elements from the customer base to introduce new functionality to Informix product.
Also in the area of IBM website, a new functionality has been released: MyNotifications. You will want to register this webpage in order to receive the notifications of your choice (new product defects, new patch release, new versions etc…, on the frequency of your choice (daily, weekly). I have registered and will definitely remain registered, due to the value of the information delivered.
Check at this place.
New RFEs for June 2017
|
Integrate user authentication among IDS/JSON/REST Presently, the only way to authenticate users to the REST listener is by setting up mapped users and using PAM, which limits things to the Mongo 2.6 API and earlier. It also prevents having seamless u… Submitted |
1 Votes
Secure the Wire Listener: Stop requiring clear text passwords
Currently, the only way to secure the wire listener is to put clear text passwords in the jsonListener.properties file. This is true both for the JDBC connection to the database and for the SSL keysto…
Submitted
1 Votes
HPL jobs freeze when changing index setting
Problem description and business impact
When HPL is used to load a table with indexes, it does a set indexes
filtering before the loading of the table and does a s…
Submitted
1 Votes
Spectrum Protect (TSM) version 7.1.7 certification with Informix ONBAR 12.1…
Customers using earlier versions for TSM (now Spectrum Protect) needs certification of version 7.1.7 or newer with Informix ONBAR 12.10, in order to be able to upgrade the backup infrastructure.
Submitted
2 Votes
Improve CREATE SCHEMA AUTHORIZATION statement to allow encapsulation of any…
Currently CREATE SCHEMA AUTHORIZATION can be used to encapsulate some DDL statements (see https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSGU8G_12.1.0/com.ibm.sqls.doc/ids_sqs_0483.htm)
We would like…
Submitted
1 Votes
Add Informix/onbar in the list of VEEAM Enterprise Backup Solution supporte…
VEEAM is a fast growing Enterprise Backup solution. As of today, Informix is not part of VEEAM’s supported DBMS, but should be supported before decision makers choose other DBMS platforms.
Submitted
1 Votes
Improvements to UPDATE STATISTICS LOW
The run time of UPDATE STATISTICS LOW can be reduced by setting the parameter USTLOW_SAMPLE which also reduces I/O by using a sampling algorithm. However the table data may be deemed to be too heavily…
Submitted
1 Votes
TOP 12 RFE’s
Do not forget to vote for one or several of those RFE’s if they fit your requirements.
You can access each RFE by clicking on the above links. At the bottom of each RFE page you will find a hyperlink to vote for it. You will see the Request stats, including number of votes for this request, on the right side of the request page. The more votes, the greater the chance an enhancement will be addressed by the Development Team, taking into consideration the general interest.
Take some time to examine the full list and vote for the enhancements you would like to see implemented.
Gary Ben-Israel
Works for me
In this section I will write about things that help me in my day to day work. Most DBAs probably have their own way to perform these tasks which may be different than the way I do them. So, if you find an error or can think of a better way, please let me know. If not feel, free to use these tips as is or modify them to fit your needs.
The system catalog has all information about table columns. However it is not readable to non DBAs.
This is a view that does the work. Because the information in sysdefaults is a little cryptic I had to supply a stored procedure to parse it.
create function get_def_val(t_def char(256))
returning varchar(255)
define ret_def varchar(255);
define j, k smallint;
define c char(1);
let k = length(t_def);
if k = 0 then
return "";
end if
if substr(t_def, 1, 1) = " " then
return " ";
end if
let c = substr(t_def, k, 1);
if c is null then
if k = 1 then
return "";
end if
let ret_def = substr(t_def, 1, k - 1);
return ret_def;
end if
for j = 1 to k
if substr(t_def, j, 1) = " " then
exit for;
end if
end for
if j > k then
let ret_def = t_def;
else
let ret_def = substr(t_def, j + 1, k - j);
end if
return ret_def;
end function;
create function get_col_def(t_name nvarchar(128), c_name nvarchar(128))
returning varchar(255)
define ret_def, c_def varchar(255);
define c_type char(1);
select a.default, a.type
into c_def, c_type
from sysdefaults a, syscolumns b, systables c
where c.tabname = t_name
and b.tabid = c.tabid
and b.colname = c_name
and a.colno = b.colno
and a.tabid = b.tabid;
if dbinfo("sqlca.sqlerrd2") = 0 then
return null;
end if
if c_type = "C" then
let ret_def = "Current";
elif c_type = "T" then
let ret_def = "Today";
elif c_type = "N" then
let ret_def = "NULL";
elif c_type = "U" then
let ret_def = "User";
elif c_type = "S" then
let ret_def = "Dbservername or Sitename";
elif c_type = "L" then
let ret_def = get_def_val(c_def);
else
let ret_def = "Unkown column type!";
end if
return ret_def;
end function;
create view my_column_view
(my_column_view_ik, table_name, column_name,
column_type, column_length, quote_flag, nullable, default) as
select x0.tabid||x0.colno, x1.tabname, x0.colname,
case
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 0 then
"CHAR ("||x0.collength||")"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 1 then
"SMALLINT"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 2 then
"INTEGER"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 3 then
"FLOAT"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 4 then
"SMALLFLOAT"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 5 then
"DECIMAL"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 6 then
"SERIAL"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 7 then
"DATE"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 8 then
"MONEY"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 9 then
"NULL"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 10 then
"DATETIME "||datetime_type(x0.collength)
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 11 then
"BYTE"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 12 then
"TEXT"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 13 then
"VARCHAR "||varchar_length(x0.collength)
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 14 then
"INTERVAL "||datetime_type(x0.collength)
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 15 then
"NCHAR ("||x0.collength||")"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 16 then
"NVARCHAR "||varchar_length(x0.collength)
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 17 then
"INT8"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 18 then
"SERIAL8"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 19 then
"SET"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 20 then
"MULTISET"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 21 then
"LIST"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 22 then
"ROW (unnamed)"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 23 then
"COLLECTION"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 40 then
"LVARCHAR ("||x0.collength||")"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 41 and x0.extended_id = 5 then
"BOOLEAN"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 41 and x0.extended_id = 10 then
"BLOB"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 41 and x0.extended_id = 11 then
"CLOB"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 43 then
"LVARCHAR (client-side only)"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 45 then
"BOOLEAN"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 52 then
"BIGINT"
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 53 then
"BIGSERIAL"
when x0.coltype = 2061 then
"IDSSECURITYLABEL"
when x0.coltype = 4118 then
"ROW (named)"
else
"UNKNOWN"
end,
x0.collength,
case
when mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 0 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 7 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 10 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 13 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 14 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 15 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 16 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 40 or
(mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 41 and x0.extended_id = 5) or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 45 or
mod(x0.coltype, 256) = 43 then
1
else
0
end,
case
when x0.coltype > mod(x0.coltype, 256) then
"No"
else
"Yes"
end,
get_col_def(x1.tabname, x0.colname)
from syscolumns x0, systables x1
where x1.tabid = x0.tabid
and x1.tabtype IN ('T', 'V')
and x2.table_name = x1.tabname;
Gary Ben-Israel
Informix corner
Informix Tech Day on tour in Europe
June was rich in terms of Informix events in Western Europe. Brussels, Belgium hosted 2 Informix related events on June 13th. The morning session was dedicated to the following subject, “Creating real world sensor-to-business-value IoT applications”.
Under this general theme, 3 main topics were presented and discussed:
- What can IoT bring to companies in terms of Business Value
- The IBM IoT architecture components from Edge to the Cloud
- The diversified analytics from the Edge to the Data Centre
The audience was mainly composed of non-Informix Users who have been discovering a new or almost new name for themselves: Informix. Many of them were amazed by how Informix could address IoT and they left the room with a totally different idea of Informix, in any case, very positive feedback.
After attending the morning presentations, some people remained curious about Informix and decided to stay for the afternoon sessions exclusively dedicated to Informix.
Although not initially intended, this local user group meeting turned into a mini-CAC meeting, since several of the most important European Business Partners were attending.
Many important messages were given during this meeting:
- Presentation of the new IBM-HCL agreement to the local user base
- Presentation of the Informix Roadmap and where Informix will go
- Update on Informix new functionality since Informix 11.70
- Presentation of major Informix functionality rarely used by customers, i.e. encryption, security, replication and Hybrid development
During the session, interesting questions and discussions took place between users, BPs and the HCL team, which hopefully helped the audience to understand this major and exciting change in Informix’ life. Thanks to Hans Miseur and Infocura for the great job organizing this event!
Two day after, the Informix Tech Day moved to Paris with the same presentations schedule and format.
This time the audience was more familiar and there were many more attendees. We understood they were eager to know about this important news about Informix.
Marcelo Cabane, who the audience really appreciated because his introduction was in French, did a great job explaining the agreement and where Informix wants to go now that it is driven jointly by IBM and HCL. The discussions at the end of the meeting showed a globally positive feeling by the customers and partners, who seem to particularly appreciate the energy that HCL and IBM are finally putting into the expansion of Informix in the market place. Many thanks to Stuart Litel and Cindy Lichtenauer who help to set up this event.
Eric Vercelletto
Calendar of events
August – 2017
| Date | Event | Location | Contact |
| 8 | WAIUG Meeting | McLean, VA, USA | waiug.org |
September – 2017
| Date | Event | Location | Contact |
| 18 | Brazil – Informix Roadshow | Sao Paulo, Brazil |
Informix resources
IBM Informix home page
www.informix.com or directly at: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/
Informix Blogs and Wikis
Blogs and Wikis that have been updated during the last month
- Blogs, Videos, News and more at http://planetids.com *** Up to date feeds from many blogs ***
- Ben Thompson’s blog at: https://informixdba.wordpress.com/
- Fernando Nunes at http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/
- The Lenexa view at: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/smoe?lang=en
More Blogs and Wikis
- Art Kagel http://informix-myview.blogspot.co.il/
- Eric Vercelletto http://www.levillageinformix.blogspot.com/ (In French)
- Informix Experts at: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/idsteam?lang=en
Social media
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25049
Twitter : https://twitter.com/IBM_Informix
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/IBM.Informix
YouTube : https://ibm.biz/BdH2nb
Informix IoT Channel : https://ibm.biz/BdH2nm
Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines
- The IIUG forums at /forums/technical.php
- Informix Marketing channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/informixmarketing?feature=results_main
- IBM DATABASE MAGAZINE at http://www.ibmdatabasemag.com
- Credentials, the IBM Certification Newsletter at http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/email/201307credentials.shtml
- The Informix Zone at http://www.informix-zone.com
- There is now an Informix group on LinkedIn. The group is called “Informix Supporter”, so anyone loving Informix can join, from current IBM employees, former Informix employees, to users. It will also be a good occasion to get in touch with others or long-time-no-seen friends. If you fancy showing the Informix logo on your profile, join. To join, simply go to: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/25049/5E4B2048E558
Closing and Credits
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 Information 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.
Editor: Gary Ben-Israel
For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org
