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
- Highlights
- Conference corner
- Support corner
- RFE corner
- Calendar of events
- Informix resources
- Useful links
- Closing and credits
| 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 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
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/
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
- Fernando Nunes
More Blogs and Wikis
- ognjen.orel
- Martin Fuerderer
- Ben Thompson’s blog
- Eric Vercelletto (In English)
- Eric Vercelletto (In French)
- YouTube
- Informix IoT Channel
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 |
| 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. |
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| Editor: | Gary Ben-Israel |
For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org.
