IIUG Insider (Issue #188) February 2016

Highlights: You have until midnight (EST) Monday, March 7th, 2016 to register for IIUG 2016

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

My apologies for being late. I just returned from a tiring trip abroad. I hope you will find this issue helpful.

Informix is doing well within IBM. We hope of course it will do much better.

We are looking forward to the IIUG 2016 conference in May. Three days of excellent technical sessions, a day of in-depth tutorials, keynotes, parties, networking and meeting colleagues and IBMers will make it, as in the previous years, the greatest Informix event in 2016. See you all there.

Gary Ben-Israel


Highlights Back to top

You have until midnight (EST) Monday, March 7, 2016 to register for IIUG 2016

You can still save $100 off the full registration if you register by midnight March 7th. IIUG members can save an additional $100 off the registration price of admission by JOINING the IIUG. It’s free! Just go here to join the IIUG, and then here to register for IIUG 2016, and claim your additional 100 discount for a total savings of $200.


Conference corner Back to top

Still on the fence? Are you humming “Should I stay or should I go?”

We have many reasons why you NEED to go Florida for IIUG 2016 in Ponte Vedra Beach from May 4 – 8.

Once again this year’s conference registration includes a full day of tutorials, on Sunday May 8th, and these tutorials are included at NO CHARGE for all paid attendees. The planning committee has finished processing the speaker submissions, which cover a multitude of topics pertinent to Informix users and administrators, including the new Informix features, as well as tried and true “must have” topics like those involving maximizing your system performance. Review the list of approved sessions and hands on labs for additional reasons to help you decide that IIUG 2016 is a valuable way to use some of your training budget.

So aside from all the Geek-fest attractions of this year’s event, keep in mind the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa is truly a “world class” resort. The resort is also the home of the “TPC at Sawgrass Stadium Course,” at which the PGA event “THE PLAYERS Championship” is contested each year. Also commonly known in golf circles as “The Fifth Major,” this is the PGA golf course with the infamous “island green,” which you likely have seen on TV. In fact, the PGA holds its tournament the week after IIUG 2016, so you can just stick around the week after to watch some golf. But seriously folks, this is a nice place, the nicest place at which we’ve ever hosted an IIUG event. And the price is right — Somebody who shall not be named negotiated a killer ($189 per night) hotel rate for us.

Note that the closest airport to the resort is Jacksonville, FL (JAX). Somewhat further away is Orlando, FL (MCO), home of the famous Mouse-House (Walt Disney World). Some of you traveling from afar may find Orlando to have more convenient flights, which may make the extra driving time well worth it.

So get OFF THE FENCE and make your plans now to join us in Florida May 4 – 8!

Looking forward to seeing you there,

The IIUG 2016 Planning Committee

The CAC is back!

The CAC meeting is back and it is at IIUG 2016! Join IBM for dinner Tuesday evening May 3rd to kick off this event, followed by the CAC meeting on Wednesday May 4th. Please continue watching the IIUG 2016 website as more details become available.


Support corner Back to top

How to get a Lock error with Dirty Read

In a situation where row level locking is in use and different records are being accessed in multiple sessions with Dirty Read, why is it possible to get a “record is locked” error? For example:


-244: Could not do a physical-order read to fetch next row.
-107: ISAM error:  record is locked.

If a row is selected with the intent to update, the update process acquires an update lock. Update locks permit other processes to read, or share, a row that is about to be updated, but they do not allow those processes to update or delete it. Just before the update occurs, the update process promotes the shared lock to an exclusive lock. An exclusive lock prevents other processes from reading or modifying the contents of the row until the lock is released.

An update process can acquire an update lock on a row or on a page that has a shared lock from another process, but you cannot promote the update lock from shared to exclusive (and the update cannot occur) until the other process releases its lock. If an attempt is made, the 244/107 error sequence will occur.

– David Jay


RFE Corner Back to top

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, are 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 the 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 a few days ago and will definitely keep registered, due to the value of the information delivered.

Register here

(Login at DeveloperWorks to see the RFEs.)

New RFEs for February 2016

Slow activity for February in terms of new RFEs, but also noting that a consistent number of votes have been cast for existing ones, see TOP 10 in next section.

DBSPACETEMP environment variable needs to accommodate multiple page sizes concurrently
Actual ONCONFIG parameter DBSPACETEMP allows temp dbspaces with only ONE page size
Request for support multiple page sizes for DBSPACETEMP
Votes: 2
Informix ER: Increase maximum allowed replicates
For that customer, the total number of replicates is exceeded (~ 30,000) and make any additional deployment very complex. Request to increase the maximum number of replicates within acceptable limits.
Votes: 7
Mark a row as “archived” so it will not show up in regular SELECT (or other SELECT (or other SQL) operations
The idea is to mark a row as archived so it will not show up in regular SELECT (or any SQL for that matter), but it still exists and can be “visible” again if needed.
Votes: 3

Top 14 RFEs

Abstract Status Votes
In-Place Alter for varchar, lvarchar and boolean Under Consideration 41
Backup from RSS or HDR Secondaries using ontape, onunload, onbar, dbexport Under Consideration 35
SQL interface to obtain the temporary space usage (tables, hash, sorts…) Submitted 32
Request to track and save a time stamp for last time an index was used. Nee… Submitted 23
New feature to have FORCE_DDL_EXEC functionality for all DDL changes Submitted 22
Obtain the query plan of a running query Under Consideration 21
Implementation of regular expressions (adding to LIKE/MATCHES functions) Under Consideration 21
Implement CREATE OR REPLACE option for stored procedures Under Consideration 17
Need an onmode option to terminate orphaned, tightly coupled global transac… Under Consideration 14
ALTER owner of database objects after creation Submitted 14
Allow triggers install/updates without taking an outage for the box Under Consideration 13
Add constant to centralized Key of ER Consolidation Model Submitted 13
Ability to re-create views and procedures without dependent objects being d… Under Consideration 13
Backup Individual database, not entire instance Submitted 12

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.

Eric Vercelletto


Calendar of events Back to top

April – 2016
Date Event Location Contact
5 Washington Area Informix Users Group Meeting Tysons Corner, VA James Edmiston
May – 2016
Date Event Location Contact
4 CAC Ponte Vedra Beach, FL Coming Soon
4-8 IIUG 2016 Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa, at Ponte Vedra Beach. Florida conference@iiug.org

 


Informix resources Back to top

IBM Informix home page

http://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

More Blogs and Wikis

Social Media

Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines

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

 


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.
Editor: Gary Ben-Israel

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

 

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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.