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
  • Machine notes for IBM Informix 12.10.xC8
• Conference corner
  • IIUG 2017 – April 23-27 Raleigh NC, USA
• RFE corner
• Works for me
• Informix corner
  • Videos
• Calendar of events
• Informix resources
  • Informix Blogs and Wikis
  • Social media
  • Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines
• Useful Links

Editorial

The IIUG board of Directors is planning it’s first 2017 meeting which will take place in Budapest, Hungary.

I hope to report about it in the January Insider. Elections for the 2017-2018 board is planned to start on February 2017. Stay tuned.

Gary Ben-Israel

Highlights

Machine notes for IBM Informix 12.10.xC8

These are the machine notes for IBM® Informix® 12.10.xC8.

To view the notes, expand the categories in the contents pane in the Release information subtopic under the Product overview topic.

• HEWLETT PACKARD HP-UX Itanium
• IBM AIX 6.1 64bit
• Linux Intel
• Linux Power Series
• Linux Power Series (little endian)
• Linux x86_64
• Linux ARMv7
• Linux zSeries
• Mac OS X Server x86_64
• SOLARIS 64bit
• Solaris x86 64Bit
• Windows x64

Gary Ben-Israel

Conference corner

The IIUG Planning Committee is currently accepting presentation proposals for IIUG 2017, which is to be held Sunday April 23 – Thursday April 27, 2017 at The Marriott City Center, Raleigh NC, USA. Registration will be open soon. Go to www.iiug2017.org for more information.

Remember, the proposal does not have to be a full presentation, it just needs to be a simple paragraph discussing the contents of your presentation.

The Planning team will be meeting shortly to review the session proposals to select those that will be offered at IIUG. Once selections have been made, speakers will be notified and once these speakers have accepted the information will be posted to the website. So, keep checking the website.

See you in Raleigh!

The IIUG 2017 Conference Team

Conference questions can be sent to conference@iiug.org

RFE corner

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 for 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.

Check at this place.

New RFEs for October 2016

Only 2 RFEs for this month. Nonetheless some of the top 14 are still progressing.

SYSSQLTRACE SHOULD STORE HOST VARIABLES VALUE

Votes 1

When trying to use SQLTRACE to audit queries, in HIGH Mode, host variables are not saved in the system catalog syssqltrace table, but in the onstat -g his output.

Submitted

MSG_DATE format should follow $DBDATE if defined

Votes 4

Several customers would like the format of the date written to online.log when we have the MSG_DATE parameter defined/activated to follow the format of DBDATE.

Submitted

TOP 14 RFE’s

Do not forget to vote for one or several of those RFE’s if they fit your requirements. The more vote, the more chances that the Dev Team will seriously consider the request.

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.

Gary Ben-Israel

Works for me

In this section I will write about things that help me in my day to day work. Most DBAs probably have their own ways to perform these tasks which may be different than the way I do them. So, if you find an error or can think of a better way, please let me know. If not feel, free to use these tips as is or modify them to fit your needs. It is common that a view select from another view. The problem is that when we drop a view all the views that are selecting from it are droped as well. We want to find those views so we can recreate them. The problem is that the column viewtext in sysviews is a CHAR(256) so the view text resides on many rows. Hence the table name we are searching can be split on two rows which makes it difficult to find. We use a SPL function to do the search. It is then easy to add a view that returns the desired results.

drop function if exists view_in_view_fn(nvarchar(128),nvarchar(128));
create function view_in_view_fn(view_name nvarchar(128), match_view nvarchar(128))
returning smallint;
  define all_view_text lvarchar(30000);
  define view_text nchar(256);
  define s_no integer;

  let all_view_text = null;
  foreach
  select seqno, viewtext
    into s_no, view_text
    from systables a, sysviews b
   where b.tabid = a.tabid
     and a.tabname = view_name
   order by seqno
    if all_view_text is null then
      let all_view_text = view_text;
    else
      let all_view_text = trim(all_view_text)||view_text;
    end if
  end foreach
  if all_view_text matches "*"||trim(match_view)||"*" then
    return 1;
  else
    return 0;
  end if
end function;

drop view if exists view_in_view;
create view view_in_view(parent_view, child_view) as
   select b.tabname, a.tabname
     from systables a, systables b
    where a.tabtype = "V"
      and a.tabname != b.tabname
      and view_in_view_fn(a.tabname, b.tabname) = 1;

Gary Ben-Israel

Informix corner

Videos

Gordon Gielis-Director at Select Software Solutions talks about IoT billing solution.
http://bit.ly/2fQfeVN

Dan Kallestad & Shawn Moe talk about Grain Storage, IoT and the IBM partnership
http://bit.ly/2eALjDD

Calendar of events

April – 2017

Informix resources

IBM Informix home page
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

• Blogs, Videos, News and more at http://planetids.com *** Up to date feeds from many blogs ***

• Fernando Nunes at http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/

More Blogs and Wikis

• Eric Vercelletto http://www.levillageinformix.blogspot.com/ (In French)

• Andrew Ford & Tom Girsch http://www.informix-dba.com/

• Art Kagel http://informix-myview.blogspot.co.il/

• Martin Fuerderer http://tinyurl.com/informix-nosql-blog

• Informix documentation team https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/idsdoc

Social media

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25049
Twitter : https://twitter.com/IBM_Informix
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/IBM.Informix
YouTube : https://ibm.biz/BdH2nb
Informix IoT Channel : https://ibm.biz/BdH2nm

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
• The Informix Zone at http://www.informix-zone.com
• 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

Useful Links

In response to your input, we have created a new page on IIUG web site containing all the links we use to include. Please find it at /quicklinks.html

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