IIUG Insider (Issue #157) – July 2013

Highlights: IBM CIO Forum and Executive Infobahn

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
• Highlights
  • IBM CIO Forum and Executive Infobahn
• Conference corner
  • Save $300 on Early Bird registration!
• Developer corner
  • Informix Chat with the Lab
  • New in DeveloperWorks
• Informix corner
  • Informix User Group Meeting
  • Webcast Replay: Solving the Big Data Challenge of Sensor Data
  • Fastest Informix DBA Contest
• Support Corner
• Calendar of events
• Informix resources
  • Informix blogs and wikis
  • Forums, groups, videos, and magazines
• Useful links
• Closing and credits

We’ve started planning our 2014 Informix conference. I hope to announce the date and location in the August Insider. The IIUG board decided to go east. The two cities we are currently looking at are Miami and Washington. Personally I think both locations are great, but until we finalize the contract everything is possible. Please stay tuned and make sure the IIUG conference is in your 2014 budget. Until then, watch the Insider and the IIUG website for events close to you.

If you are interested in more than just Informix, the IBM Information On Demand conference will take place in Las Vegas, November 3-7. Early bird registration will end on September 13.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor

IBM CIO Forum and Executive Infobahn

IIBM, together with Business Partners Strategy 7 and One Point Solutions, are conducting an information super highway event in a city near you to discuss current and upcoming technology trends and how to leverage them to gain competitive advantage now, and into the future.

Register today for this free workshop.

Save $300 on Early Bird registration!

Register with the Early Bird discount for the best savings between now and September 13.

Conference hotel accommodations are limited and are on a first-come, first-served basis. Please arrange your accommodations on-line as part of the registration process.

Informix Chat with the Lab

This presentation will provide an overview of the Recursive SQL with the CONNECT BY clause feature. We will provide examples of typical practical database problems and describe in detail how they can be solved with recursive SQL. The problems discussed include for bill of materials, obtaining the number of employees for each manager in a particular sub-organization, converting linked dimension hierarchies in a star schema to fixed dimension hierarchies, tracking packages, and generating test data. This presentation compares the new solutions with traditional solutions of these problems and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods. This presentation will also discuss the query transformation techniques with Informix vNext features which will focus on how query blocks are moved between different levels and optimized using examples and diagrams. Users will learn how to analyze complex examples based on various Informix 12.1 features. Examples included in this session are query block movement, table re-ordering, complex ANSI joins, sub-queries, derived tables, views, connect by, OLAP functions, setops cases.

Register for this event here.

New in DeveloperWorks

For more information go to DeveloperWorks – Informix.

Informix User Group Meeting

Informix User Group Meeting is coming to South America in August

Exciting news to our South American Informix Users about the upcoming series of Informix user group events, which is being planned in the following countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela from the 12th of August to the 29th of August. These are half-a-day events, packed with sessions which will be conducted by IBM experts to give you great overview of everything you need to know about Informix, especially around the new features of Informix 12.1.

Date and Location

For more information on these events, click here.

Spanish Translation:

Informix User Group Meeting está llegando a América del Sur en agosto 2013

Estamos muy contentos de informar a nuestros usuarios de Informix de Sudamérica acerca de la próxima serie de eventos de grupos de usuarios de Informix, que se está planificando en los siguientes países: Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador y Venezuela desde el 12 de agosto al 29 de agosto . Estos son eventos de medio día, con sesiones dictadas por expertos de IBM que le brindarán una amplia visión de todo lo que necesita saber acerca de Informix, especialmente en torno a las nuevas capacidades de Informix 12.1.

Fecha y lugar

Para obtener más información sobre estos eventos, haga clic aquí.

Webcast Replay: Solving the Big Data Challenge of Sensor Data

Now you can watch the replay of this exciting webcast on-demand at your convenience, to learn about emerging sensor data applications, the unique attributes of sensor data and the big data challenges they present. This webcast is focused on sensor data applications and IBM’s differentiated offering to solve the IT challenges of sensor data for better business insight and competitive advantage.

Fastest Informix DBA Contest

Putting Database Administrator Skills to the Test: Tune online transaction and batch processing on the same server in the Fastest Informix DBA Contest.

We have decided to extend the contest to give everyone more time and due to our workload schedules. (We have been very busy with our regular Informix customers).

The sixth-annual Advanced DataTools Fastest Informix DBA Contest for database administrators (DBAs) and users who manage IBM Informix databases brings a new twist to this year’s event. In the past, the contest was held at the International Informix User Group (IIUG) Conference. This year, the contest is being held over the web so that anyone, anywhere in the world can participate between July 9 and September 30, 2013. The winner will be the DBA who can get the most transactions per minute in an OLTP benchmark and at the same time run a batch billing job and generate the most bills in a 10 minute run.

New Fastest Informix DBA Contest 2013 Schedule:

• July 22 – Start submitting your code and onconfig entries, you will be emailed back the results in a few days
• August 20 – Webcast – Latest status update on the contest – Register here
• September 30 – All final entries must be submitted and contest closes
• October 15 – Webcast to Announce Winners

See more here.

Identifying Probable Inefficient Queries

One of the most important steps in optimizing and tuning database is to identify the queries that are causing problems. In general, if you take the most inefficient ten queries and optimize them properly, then you will immediately see the result on the overall database performance. Then you can re-iterate the same process and optimize the next ten queries. So, how can you identify the queries which causing problem? One way to go is to find out the queries which running for a long period of time, though it’s not always necessary that longest running means a slow query.

You can use OAT, onstat commands etc. to get this information but the easiest way to run the following SQL against sysmaster:syssqltrace table to identify top ten queries running for long period of time:

	SELECT FIRST 10 sql_runtime, sql_statement

	FROM sysmaster:syssqltrace

	WHERE sql_runtime > 0

	ORDER BY sql_runtime DESC;

Make sure SQLTRACE configuration parameter is enable for SQL tracing. You may include other columns from sysmaster:syssqltrace table in the above SQL to get more detail information about queries.

– Sanjit Chakraborty

IBM Informix home page

http://www.informix.com or directly at: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/

Informix blogs and wikis

I am trying something new on this section. I will first mention the blogs and wikis that have been updated during the last month. Blogs and wikis that have not been updated for over 6 months will be removed.

Blogs and Wikis that have been updated during the last month

• PlanetIDS: Blogs, Videos, News and more *** Up to date feeds from many blogs ***
• Informix documentation team
• John Miller
• Roger Powell
• Louis T. Cherian
• ognjen.orel
• Eric Vercelletto (In French)

More Blogs and Wikis

• IDS Experts blog
• Fernando Nunes
• Keshava Murthy
• Jacques Roy
• Andrew Ford
• Art Kagel
• Gary Proctor
• Eric Vercelletto’s English Website
• Mark Jamison

Forums, groups, videos, and magazines

• The IIUG forums
• Informix Marketing channel on YouTube
• IBM data magazine
• Credentials, the IBM Certification Newsletter
• The Informix Zone

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.

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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.

For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org.