Highlights: Informix for the Future – 14.10 and Beyond
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:
2.1 Informix for the Future – 14.10 and Beyond
Modernize dbexport/dbimport and control them from HQ
4.1 PHP Informix Driver in RHEL 8
4.2 Compare the IBM Informix v.14.10 editions
6.3 Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines
Table of Contents
1) Editorial
Informix is doing well. Version 14.10 xC2 has been out for a while. It is stable and has new cool features.
InformixHQ is great. But there is no news. You may say no news is good news but as a newsletter editor I would like to see more action.
I went to our forum at /community and there were 117 register members.
Come on. We can do better. Joining the forum is more than just helping yourself it is helping others.
A live forum means a live product. So please go ahead and join. If you have questions or answers post.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
2) Highlights
2.1 Informix for the Future – 14.10 and Beyond
You can find the following blog by Isaiah Brown and much more at /community
In today’s world, companies need to be able to derive insights from their data no matter where it is – and that’s what Informix is all about. No matter the complication, Informix is built to be your partner on the journey towards maximizing your data. The Informix partnership between HCL and IBM is built to ensure Informix remains great at what it does best, while simultaneously pushing the product into the future and supporting it for the long term. Towards this commitment to development into the future, the first major release of Informix (14.10) was released in March this year – the first such release in five years. With this push into the future, some of the past must be let go, and accordingly, both 11.15 and 11.70 have already gone out of support.
The goal is to maximize this renewed attention to the product and to continue pushing it further. Though the product already has a strong base in retail, manufacturing, telecom, and IoT, the aim is to continually attract more customers from even more industries to utilize the power and potential of Informix. From a strategy perspective, this means a focus on a strong and detailed roadmap for future development based on customer input. This includes a stronger focus on the cloud, making it easier to manage Informix environments, graphing capabilities, and much more.
In 14.10 particularly, an emphasis has been put on the speed of the product. As no one uses a database in isolation of other products and systems, intense focus has been put into increasing the speed within solution stacks. Secondaries have been severely sped up to catch up with primaries, with secondaries displaying speed improvements of 500%. But the speed injection doesn’t end there:
- Single system processing up 10%
- Java UDR up 40%
- JSON and REST APIs up 200%
- JDBC driver up 60%
- Login replay performance for RSS, SDS, and HDR secondary servers up 500%
As data protection continues to rise to the forefront of politics around the world, many countries today no longer want their data being moved out of their home countries, forcing some businesses to keep their data where it originates. As a sign of this progress and attention to the future, the next release of Informix is set to include the ability to scale to many nodes – so even when data must stay at its original source, users can run transactions across hundreds of thousands of nodes without data movement.
Further down the line, releases will include learning resources to make the product more user-friendly and updates more accessible. Additionally, means for user feedback will be built directly into the product to allow users to give recommendations based on how they use it. Machine learning capabilities will also be added to make the system easier to manage and quicker to meet business needs.
Gary Ben-Israel
3) RFE Corner
IBM has created a new RFE – Request For Enhancements website.
https://ibm-data-and-ai.ideas.aha.io/?project=INFX
Please visit this site to vote for your favorite enhancements and place new requests.
As you can see, it is a new RFE site. It is friendly and has a nice look and feel.
Recent
Modernize dbexport/dbimport and control them from HQ
dbexport and dbimport are useful tools, very easy to use and straight forward. but as the database are growing exponentially, the tool is showing its limitations and a workaroud must be generally be applied, which are kind of time consuming to write them.
Votes: 6
Created: November 2, 2019
Status: Needs review
Popular
Backup from RSS or HDR Secondaries using ontape, onunload, onbar, dbexport
In HDR environments, being able to backup or export databases from and HDR, HDR read-only, or an RSS secondary server is critical. Programs like ontape, onunload, dbexport, and onbar generate locks on tables during backups and data-exports. This creates problems while applications and users using Informix try to use the system during backups in 24 x 7 x 365 production environments. Being able to backup or export data on secondary systems is critical for compliance and backup integrity.
Votes: 86
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Obtain the query plan of a running query
Many times a DBA is called to check upon a slow process. Most of the times those processes are running a slow query.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if the query is using the best query plan or not. A DBA can reproduce the query, but it it was prepared without values or if the statistics were changed after it started there is no guarantee that the query plan seen by the DBA is the same as the running query.
We have “onstat -g pqs” which sometimes can give us a clue, but it’s mostly cryptic and undocumented. If a user has X-Windows he can try xtree, but it’s a bit strange for todays standards.
We also have SQLTRACE, but if it was not set when the query was launched it will not capture the info (and besides, due to the circular nature of the buffer it may not be there at the time we need it).
A simple pseudo-table in sysmaster could probably implement this with ease.
It could also be extended to support the “last” query plan making it easy to get the query plan in any tool
Votes: 70
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
SQL interface to obtain the temporary space usage (tables, hash, sorts…)
A DBA and possibly a programmer needs an easy way to monitor who is responsible for the temporary space usage.
Currently it’s possible a user may be consuming a lot of temporary space and impacting other sessions, without the DBA being able to quick and easily identify the session responsible.
Other reports (from IIUG mailing list) and another RFE (36245) mentions the need for programmers to be able to find out the current session’s temp tables (onstat -g ses shows this).
The definitive solution for this should be an SQL interface showing:
– session ID
– object name
– object type (explicit temp table, implicit temp table, hash join, sort …?)
– used space
– chunk/dbspace being used
– owner nam
– ??? (PID and others, but probably thos can be gathered with joins)
This should supersede RFE ID 36245 and this includes the request for that RFE and more.
Votes: 64
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Backup Individual database, not entire instance
Need a mechanism, similar to ontape, to backup a live database (as opposed to entire instance), without locking it.
Votes: 59
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Informix should be able to change owner on tables and any other objects
If user=informix creates all database and all tables, then programmer creates table but user=informix cannot change it. Only drop it.
Votes: 58
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Gary Ben-Israel
4) Informix Corner
4.1 PHP Informix Driver in RHEL 8
/en/2019/10/07/php-informix-driver-in-rhel-8/
4.2 Compare the IBM Informix v.14.10 editions
Learn the differences in features, functions, and pricing models across all IBM Informix v.14.10 editions
/en/2019/10/08/compare-informix/
5) Events
5.1 IBM Informix Roadshows
2019 IBM Informix Roadshow – 14.1 Frankfurt
November 6 – November 7
IBM Office Frankfurt, Wilhelm-Fay-Straße 32, 65936 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Frankfurt, Germany + Google Map
5.2 WAIUG Meeting
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
McLean, VA
6) Informix Resources
IIUG website
www.iiug.org
IBM Informix home page
www.informix.com or directly at: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/
IBM Informix community
/community
6.1 Informix Blogs and Wikis
Blogs and Wikis that have been updated during the last month
- Andrés Repossi https://andreserepossi.wixsite.com/hablemosinformix (In Spanish)
More Blogs and Wikis
- Art Kagel http://informix-myview.blogspot.co.il/
- IBM Blogs https://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/tag/550
6.2 Social Media
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25049
Twitter : https://twitter.com/iiug
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/IIUG.Informix
Informix IoT Channel : https://ibm.biz/BdH2nm
6.3 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
- 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
