IIUG Insider (Issue #141) March 2012

Highlights: Finally! A TPC-C benchmark has been performed on 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:

 

Editorial Back to top

I would like to say a few words about two events that will have an impact on the IIUG.

The first is the elections for the IIUG board of directors. The elections are going on for 12 days and will be over in on Monday April 2nd. I’m sure most of the voters have voted already. I you haven’t you should hurry. This is your chance to influence the IIUG. On Monday I will find out if I will continue on the board or this is my last Insider. The IIUG board is leading the Informix community in the battle to make Informix the number 1 database in the world. I’m sure IBM will settle for number 2 but we will not.

The second event is the IIUG conference. This is our fifth conference and the first on the West Coast after four times in Kansas. Don’t miss this event. It is the best value for money on Informix education. And on top of that there is the networking and the fun.

We hope as many as possible will participate in the two events.

A short personal note that has nothing to do with Informix or the IIUG.

A few words about Disney. Disney is a dog. He is 15 months old. My daughter got him when he was 8 weeks of age. Disney is going to be a guide dog for a blind person. Dogs like that need to grow in a loving environment until they can start their training. We provided the loving environment and in return Disney gave us his unconditional love, as only dogs can do. Today Disney left for his training. He is clever and good-hearted. I’m sure he will be a great guide dog and will make a blind person happy. But he just left today and I miss him already. I know it is not Informix related. I just had to write about it. I hoped it would make me feel better. It did not but I cannot delete it. Sorry for your time.

This is Disney on the day he came and on the day he left.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor

President’s Note:

This just in… March 30, 2012…

The IIUG Conference Hotel is almost sold out for some of the nights. So act quickly.

And Gary: I heard Informix is so easy to setup, you even had Disney the dog install version 11.7 at your office!

Stuart

Highlights Back to top

Finally! a TPC-C benchmark has been performed on Informix!

For almost fifteen years we are waiting for a TPC-C benchmark on Informix. If you go to http://www.tpc.org and look for the top 10 you will find Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, even DB2. This has not changed.

Eric Vercelletto could not wait any longer and decided to perform a TPC-C benchmark by himself. He did not select a gigantic hardware configuration and an enterprise database. Instead he performe the test on a $1,200 Linux box using the free Informix Innovator-C edition. The results were remarkable.

Read all about it at:

http://en.vercelletto.com/2012/03/21/informix-innovator-c-edition-pushed-to-limits/

It was not an official TPC-C benchmark, but it demonstrates the power of Informix and shows that performing a TPC-C benchmark is doable.

Let’s see if IBM takes up the gauntlet.

Conference corner Back to top

IIUG 2012 in San Diego is Less Than Month Away!

The IIUG Informix Conference in sunny San Diego, California is less than a month away! Airline prices are increasing. If you wait much longer, you might even get stuck in the middle seat on the flight!

Register today for the premier INFORMIX event of the year and book your travel now!!

Big Data is a huge keyword these days, David Barnes, Program Director of Strategy and Emerging Internet Technologies at IBM, one of our keynote speakers is going to tell you all about it!

Dr. Arvind Krishna, General Manager of IBM Information Management at IBM, Jerry Keesee, Director of Informix DB Development and Martin Wildberger, VP of Worldwide Information Management Development will also be talking about all the dead sexy, new initiatives going on at IBM.

Our sponsors really make this event possible. You will be able to talk one on one with folks from these exciting companies and learn how they can help you do better at your job wowing the bosses. You can see all the sponsors at our sponsor page.

You say three days of Informix is just not enough! Increase your conference experience by attending one or more of Sunday’s tutorials. Tutorials are optional and can be included in your conference package. Check out the tutorials page for additional information on these in-depth topics and learn how to add these to your registration.

Don’t forget to check out the session schedule to start planning your conference itinerary.

So why wait any longer? This is an event you won’t want to miss!

Register today at https://www.iiug.org/conf/2012/iiug/register.php.

See you in San Diego!

IIUG Conference Planning Committee

Education Back to top

Informix Warehouse Accelerator and Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence

Advanced DataTools Webcast: April 10th at 2:00pm EST

In February we hosted a Webcast to demo the Informix Warehouse Accelerator that demonstrated our current benchmarks with this exciting new Informix database technology. We demonstrated ad-hoc queries on a bookstore database with 250 million customers and over a billion records in the fact table. In this Webcast we will combine that with the best Open Source Business Intelligence – Pentaho.

Pentaho is the open source business intelligence leader. Thousands of organizations globally depend on Pentaho to make faster and better business decisions that positively impact their bottom lines. Advanced DataTools is a certified and we can help you implement an open source business intelligence solution. The Pentaho BI Suite provides a full spectrum of data integration and business intelligence (BI) capabilities including ETL, OLAP, query and reporting, interactive analysis, dashboards, data mining and a BI platform that has made it the world’s most popular open source BI suite. Pentaho’s platform also provides broad enterprise data services including integration with Hadoop for Big Data analytics and support for the company’s Agile BI initiative, which enables organizations to build BI applications more quickly, respond to business changes more easily and expedite time-to-value for up to 90% less cost than traditional BI vendors.

To register for the Informix Warehouse Accelerator and Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence Webcast, please visit http://advancedatatools.com/Informix/IWAWebcasts.html.

Developer corner Back to top

New in DeveloperWorks

Get started now with the Informix TimeSeries solution
/url/dw_timeseries.html
IBM Informix provides native support for handling time series data. The TimeSeries data type present in IBM Informix helps to reduce the cost of storage as well as helping to increase performance when you select and load large amounts of time series data. In this article, learn how you can start creating and loading the time series data. Also, the Virtual Table Interface makes time series look like the normal tables. This article also describes general architecture of IBM Informix time series components, steps for creating and loading a time series, and administering a time series using the Open Admin tool.

28 Mar 2012

System Administration Certification exam 919 for Informix 11.70 prep, Part 5: Informix backup and restore
/url/dw_exam_919.html
In this tutorial, you’ll learn about IBM Informix(R) database backup and restore concepts and strategies, and you’ll learn about utilities and commands for managing your database backup and restore processes. In addition, learn how to monitor your backups and perform problem determination when necessary. This tutorial prepares you for Part 5 of the System Administration Certification exam 919 for Informix v11.70.

21 Mar 2012

Optimizing Informix database access
/url/dw_optimizing.html
Normally access to an Informix database can take from less than a second up to some expected period of time, depending on the database operation. Sometimes it can take much longer than you expected due to many reasons, such as the network speed, system performance, system load, and so on. In the worst scenario, the Informix client may be blocked forever for the expected server response that never comes. This article explains how to interrupt an SQL or connection request that is requiring more time than expected in order to improve the performance of your Informix database application.

21 Mar 2012

For more information go to DeveloperWorks – Informix: /url/devworks.html

Informix news Back to top

Facebook

Join IBM Data Management Magazine on Facebook for the latest news and headlines

Throughout 15 years as an award-winning print publication, IBM Data Management Magazine has chronicled the steady evolution of information management. And now, as an online-only publication launching in spring 2012, we’re building on that heritage in a new format. You can stay on top of all the latest around IBM Data Management by liking us on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/IBMdatamag Video

Stuart Litel (IIUG President) speaks on the Upcoming 2012 IIUG Conference in San Diego

Highlights of the discussion:

  • IIUG conference moves from beautiful Kansas City to the sun and fun of San Diego
  • This year there is more meeting room which means more sessions
  • Two full track of sessions, totaling to over 100 sessions in this year’s IIUG conference
  • An opportunity to learn about other popular products of IBM this year at the IIUG conference
  • Exclusive track of 15 sessions exclusively on Genero
  • And finally, in San Diego – nonstop Sun fun and surfing!

View the complete Interview here: http://youtu.be/W6OlhysxJQYtners

Success story

GreenIvory

Fast performance and scalability deliver seven million web pages a day.

GreenIvory LLC is an e-marketing software vendor focusing on web tools designed to increase the efficiency of its customers’ Internet communication and usage. GreenIvory’s customers are communication agencies (both traditional and digital), ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) and other companies for whom the web is an essential bidirectional channel.

Read the complete story here: http://ibm.co/GT4P4a

Articles

Running Informix on Solid-State Drives – Speed Up Database Access – Breaking the disk I/O bottleneck
http://bit.ly/GTdJ2X

IIUG Heads West for 2012 : Get ready for sun and sand in San Diego (from the Stuart Litel’s (IIUG President) column in the IBM Data Management Magazine)
http://ibmdatamag.com/2012/03/iiug-heads-west-for-2012/

Achieve continuous availability of a data mart even during the procedure of renewing the data, with #Informix
http://t.co/N6VRq2y3

“Better results, lower cost for a broad set of new IBM clients and partners broad” – Bernie Spang’s (IBM Executive) view on the broad range of new IBM clients and partners seen recently
http://bit.ly/zyCzOh

Have you logged into Fix Central Yet? Your central resource for fixes and updates for S/W, H/W and OS
http://t.co/O42dw0tB

IBM Informix : Want to know about the 10 issues that generate support calls?
http://t.co/Ot6E6BJt

You can stay on Top of IBM Data Management by subscribing to the IBM Data Management Magazine and also by liking on facebook!
http://bit.ly/GLIIdx

Informix Innovator-C Edition pushed to limits ? Case study for a TPC-C based Stress test realized on a Linux Box with IBM Informix Innovator-C Edition
http://bit.ly/GZbni8

International Informix User Group set to meet in San Diego: Maybe it is the new San Diego location bringing back more returnees this year? Maybe the increase in international registrations are from the growing number of new Informix clients and partners we have seen in the last year? I am hoping it is both. IBM Executive Bernie Spang speaks about the upcoming IIUG 2012 Conference
http://bit.ly/GQPbUN

Support corner Back to top

Managing log files

How often you purge Informix log files? I am sure most of you cleanup your log files on regular basis. However there are people, to whom purging log files comes as a reactionary in troubleshooting a file system full situation. Do you know there is way within Informix to programmatically manage common log files e.g., message.log, bar_act.log, bar_debug.log etc. Informix introduces this capability in version 11.70.xC3 to target embedded environment, where disk space is fixed and database instance must run years without intervention from administrators. Nevertheless administrators can take the advantage of this functionality to organize Informix log files outside the embedded environment also. The Auto Rotate Log feature provides a platform independent way to automatically manage Informix log files. This feature implemented via database scheduler that provides the flexibility to use it from dbaccress using SQL admin API, as well as from OAT.

Using this feature you can rotate, truncate, or delete log files. It can be run manually or automatically. However, to perform this operation automatically you need to enable it first. There are several new admin API commands added for this feature:

  • file rotate
  • file truncate
  • file delete

Let’s take a look couple of examples for better understanding.

Manually Rotate Log File
The rotate operation switches to a new log file and increments the ID numbers for the previous log files by one. When the maximum number of log files is reached, the oldest log file deleted. To rotate the “/usr/informix/online.log” and keep last 10 files use:
EXECUTE FUNCTION task(“file rotate”, “/usr/informix/online.log”, 10);

Manually Truncate Log File
The truncate operation removes the contents but keep the log file. To truncate “/usr/informix/bar_act.log”, specify:
EXECUTE FUNCTION task(“file truncate”, “/usr/informix/bar_act.log”);

Manually Delete Log File
The delete operation removes the file. To delete the entire “/usr/informix/bar_debug.log” file, specify:
EXECUTE FUNCTION task(“file delete”, “/usr/informix/bar_debug.log”);

Automatic Rotate Log
There are three tasks added to sysadmin:ph_task task table to automatically rotate log files, for example: online_log_rotate, bar_act_log_rotate and bar_debug_log_rotate. The tk_enable column in sysadmin:ph_task table for appropriate task needs to be enabled to rotate log automatically. You only need to enable each task once.

You can manage log files from OAT v.2.73 and higher. The rotate, delete and truncate log operations are available under “Logs” section on the left pane.

This is a neat and useful feature that can make administrator’s life little easier.

– Sanjit Chakraborty

Informix resources Back to top

Informix blogs and things

Calendar of events Back to top

Upcoming Events:

IBM Informix Genero Bootcamp on Thursday, April 26, 2012 from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM (PT), San Diego, CA.

Join us at the IBM La Jolla facility in San Diego, CA for an Informix Genero Bootcamp with IBM and Four Js experts. This is a no cost, concentrated workshop that enables you with skills to modernize your legacy 4GL applications and develop new applications for virtually any platform. You will learn how to identify new market opportunities and enhance character-based applications into an exciting and engaging visual interfaces!

Register here: http://bit.ly/zru5YK

April – 2012
Date Event Location Contact
5-6 Informix Roadshow IIC, Noisy Le Grand, France; Fabrizio Danusso – fabrizio.dnusso@fr.ibm.com
10 Informix Warehouse Accelerator and Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence Webcast Lester Knutsen – lester@advancedatatools.com
22-25 IIUG Informix Conference San Diego, CA Cindy Lichtenauer – cindy@iiug.org
24-26 Informix 11.7 Bootcamp Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia IBM – swgbp@my.ibm.com


Useful links Back to top

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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.