IIUG Insider (Issue #198) December 2016

Highlights: What’s new in IBM Informix version 12.10.xC8

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

For me 2016 was a sad year. I hope 2017 will be better.

However this editorial is not about me. It is about Informix. For Informix 2016 was a very good year.

Informix 12.1 is currently at 12.1 xC8. xC8 is not just a fix pack it has big improvements in: Administration, JSON compatibility, High availability, Application development, Performance, Security, Time series data and Warehousing.

2017 is promising.

Let me wish Informix and the IIUG community a wonderful year.
I hope to see many of you at the IIUG 2017 in Raleigh NC.

Gary Ben-Israel

Highlights

What’s new in IBM Informix version 12.10.xC8

Migration

Administration

JSON compatibility

Enterprise replication

Application development

Security

Time series

Embeddability

Gary Ben-Israel

Conference corner

Early Bird Registration for IIUG 2017 Ends January 31, 2017

iiug2017 conference banner
Paid registration includes full access to IIUG 2017 from April 23 – 27 (Sunday evening – Thursday afternoon) including continental breakfast and lunch each day, the Sunday evening Welcome reception and admission to IIUG evening events on Monday evening, April 24 and Tuesday evening, April 25. The event will officially start on Sunday evening April 23 with a welcome reception in the exhibit hall and conclude on Thursday, April 27 at approximately 5:00 pm.

Optional tutorials are INCLUDED for Thursday April 27, 2017 to PAID* attendees.

The venue for IIUG 2017 and official hotel is the Raleigh Marriott City Center, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. A limited number of rooms have been blocked for IIUG 2017 attendees at a special rate of $189 per night. Hotel booking instructions will be provided with your IIUG 2017 registration confirmation.

IIUG Pricing

Early Bird — through January 31, 2017 $1075
Regular — through March 15, 2017 $1350
Late Registration — through April 22, 2017 $1450

IIUG members who register online by April 22, 2017 get $150.00 off the above.

See you in Raleigh!

The IIUG 2017 Conference Team

Conference questions can be sent to conference@iiug.org

IIUG 2017 Confirms John Cohn as a Keynote Speaker

IIUG 2017 is excited to announce John Cohn, IBM Fellow, IBM Watson Internet of Things Division, IBM, as our first confirmed keynote speaker.
John’s current focus is on physical infrastructure for IoT, open data, internet of things communications and real time data analytics. Before joining the IoT Division, John has been an innovator in the area of design automation for both analog and digital custom integrated circuits. John received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at MIT, and earned a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in recognition of his contributions to the design automation for high performance custom circuits. John has authored more than 30 technical papers and has contributed to four books on design automation. He has approximately 70 patents in the field of design automation, methodology, circuits and smarter systems.

John is active in education issues at a local, state and national level. . He is so passionate about promoting STEM careers that he spent 59 days living and inventing in an abandoned steel mill as part of Discovery Channel’s technical survival show “The Colony”. John lives with his family in a restored 19th century schoolhouse in Jonesville Vermont and is eager to share his love of science and technology with anyone who will listen.

In October 2013 Cohn was a presenter at a TEDx conference. TEDxDelft 2013 was themed “Do try this at home” and Cohn’s talk was titled “The importance of play”.

Join us in welcoming John at IIUG 2017.
IIUG 2017 Planning Committee

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 January 2017

Already 3 RFEs for January.
Do not lock table when entering alter table menu in isql/dbaccess tools
After entering alter table menu and selecting the table , the table will lock in exclusive mode until the opertion finish. If this table is an online trade table , this behaviour is very dangerous.
So…

Submitted

Avoid engine crash during page reads after hardware failure
the index was corrupted by a hardware
malfunction, it was not corrupted by Informix, so there were very
likely index pages that had been zeroed out, or had garbage on them.
When engine try t…

Submitted

Encryption for Informix backup.
Informix 12.10 fc8 has file level encryption available in the database. However, from my understanding if you do a backup, this file in not encrypted.
Can we have a method to perform a databack that …

Submitted

TOP 14 RFE’s

Abstract Status Votes Progr.
Backup from RSS or HDR Secondaries using ontape, onunload, onbar, dbexport Under Consideration 48 +1
In-Place Alter for varchar, lvarchar and boolean Under Consideration 48 0
SQL interface to obtain the temporary space usage (tables, hash, sorts…) Submitted 46 +2
Obtain the query plan of a running query Under Consideration 38 0
Request to track and save a time stamp for last time an index was used. Nee… Submitted 35 +1
Backup Individual database, not entire instance Submitted 29 +1
ALTER owner of database objects after creation

Submitted 27 1+
New feature to have FORCE_DDL_EXEC functionality for all DDL changes Submitted 23 0
Implement CREATE OR REPLACE option for stored procedures Under Consideration 22 0
Implementation of regular expressions (adding to LIKE/MATCHES functions) Under Consideration 22 0
SQL interface to obtain the temporary space usage (tables, hash, sorts…)

Declined 19 0
Allow “group commit” as other RDBMS Under Consideration 17 0
Need an onmode option to terminate orphaned, tightly coupled global transac… Under Consideration 17 0
Allow triggers install/updates without taking an outage for the box

Under Consideration 17 0
Ability to re-create views and procedures without dependent objects being dropped (34762 Under consideration 14 0

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.

When connecting to various databases one might be interesting to know which database he is connected to. It is a simple undocumented select statement:

SELECT dbinfo('dbname') FROM systables WHERE tabid=99;

Gary Ben-Israel

Informix corner

Farewell Scott Lashley

Scott is leaving Informix and IBM. It is a sad moment for Informix and the IIUG. Thank you Scott for your huge contribution. We will all miss you.

I’m sharing Scott’s email to the IIUG Board of Directors.

With most families, you don’t get to choose who the family members are… you get what you get. With the Informix family, we’ve all chosen to be part of it. I have had the privilege of being part of this family for more than 29 years.

I want to thank all of you for the privilege of working with you on building one of the universes’ greatest software engineering achievements. Its an honor to call each and every one of you peers and colleagues. But, even more satisfying is that thru all the ups and downs of the Informix journey, we can also call each other family and friends.

I wish great success to each of you.

My contact information is scott.d.lashley@gmail.com .

To paraphrase Kobe Bryant…. Mr.GrumpyPants out!

Calendar of events

April – 2017

Date Event Location Contact
23-27 IIUG 2017 Raleigh, NC, USA

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

More Blogs and Wikis

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

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.