Highlights: Elections for the IIUG board of directors
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
- RFE corner
- Works for me
- Informix corner
- Calendar of events
- Informix resources
- Useful Links
Table of Contents
Editorial
The IIUG board of directors had its first 2017 meeting in Budapest, Hungary.
It was a good meeting. We met with Pradeep Muthalpuredathe and Shawn Moe from IBM,
Discussed IIUG 2017 in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA started planning for the IIUG 2018 (No location yet) and dealt with our ongoing activities.
It was freezing out but we spent most of our time indoors.
I hope to see many of you at the IIUG 2017 in Raleigh NC.
Gary Ben-Israel
Highlights
Elections for the IIUG Board of Directors
The IIUG is electing a new board of directors. If you want to take part leading the IIUG stay tuned and follow our website and email blats.
If you did not serve on the board before, bear in mind it requires more than just a monthly calls and 3 board meetings. I have always found the hard work rewarding and would like to see new people joining us.
If you do not want to stand for elections please vote.
The planned timetable for the elections is:
| Feb 13, 2017 | Mon | Nominations Open |
| Feb 27, 2017 | Mon | Nominations Closes |
| Mar 13, 2017 | Mon | Election Announced |
| Mar 27, 2017 | Mon | Start of Election |
| Apr 10, 2017 | Mon | End of Election |
| Apr 24, 2017 | Mon | Election Result Officially Declared |
Gary Ben-Israel
Conference corner
Speakers are confirming for IIUG 2017 – April 23-27 Raleigh NC, USA
Many of our invited speakers have returned their confirmation to speak at IIUG 2017.
We have many great topics already confirmed for this year’s event with great speakers:
- Informix Connection Manager Setup Guide – Beebe, Tom
- PHP/Informix – Beebe, Tom
- How to Get High Performance from Dynamic SQL – Cheng, Alex
- One up Performance with Informix Version 12.10 – Cheng, Alex
- Customizing OAT Monitoring and Reporting – Filippi, Jeff
- Informix SQL Performance Tuning Tips – Filippi, Jeff
- IBM IDS 12.10 Migration Best Practices – Hulka, Radomir
- IBM Informix Dynamic Server 12.10 – Extended Compression – Hulka, Radomir
- A Survey of the IIUG Software Repository – Kagel, Art
- Tuning Informix – Ten years of Lessons Learned – Kagel, Art
- New Sysmaster Queries – Continue Exploring the Sysmaster Database – Knutsen, Lester
- Running Informix in a Monster Virtual Machine – Knutsen, Lester
- Using SQL to generate SQL for Administrating an Informix Database Server – Knutsen, Lester
- SQL Capture Techniques – “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” – Lawry, Doug
- View and analyze your relational data as a graph – Orel, Ognjen
- A Data Science Introduction for Database boys and girls – Roy, Jacques
- Streaming Analytics overview – Roy, Jacques
- Oracle stuff that makes me like Informix more – Slaughter, Nancy
- The multi-tenant restore capability of 12.10 and standard SAN based recovery mechanisms – Truby, Neil
- Informix Auditing for Dummies – Walker, Mike
- Informix Query Performance Tuning Basics – Walker, Mike
- Informix Application Development New Features – Part 1 – Williams, David
- Informix Application Development New Features – Part 2 – Williams, David
You can track the additional confirmations as they come in by checking the sessions page on the IIUG 2017 site.
Don’t forget this year we have a great keynote speaker this year. We have a certified GENIUS, KICK-BUTT, inventor talking to us this year. His name is John Cohn. Look him up here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cohn
The subject of one of his TED talks is “The importance of play”. ‘Nuff said?
The event will begin on the evening of Sunday April 23rd with a welcome reception, continue Monday, April 24th, with three days of technical presentations spanning 6 professional tracks, and close on Thursday, April 27th with a full day of tutorials, included for all paid attendees. There will be nearly 100 technical presentations with topics covering performance tuning, database management, SQL (and NoSQL!), application development, Apache Spark, Security and effective product usage. Extensive coverage of Informix 12.10 xC8 will be first and foremost among the “hot-topics”.
Visit us at www.iiug2017.org to keep up with changes and additions to the session list and to register for IIUG 2017.
Questions, Problems, Suggestions just contact the conference team…
IIUG 2017 Planning Committee
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, is 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 your 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 and will definitely remain registered, due to the value of the information delivered.
Check at this place.
New RFEs for January 2017
Backup / ReadAhead Performance
To speedup backup time, it would be nice if Informix can read with more than 64k from disk.
Example 12G SAS SSD – read 100 GByte with dd iflag=direct:
Blocksize Throughput …
Submitted
Show session_id – port relationship
It would be nice to see which ports / DBSERVERNAMEs / DBSERVERALIASs are being used by session ids. Either through an onstat command or sysmaster tables.
Submitted
Allow to set Retention for Informix PSM backup images
Current Informix PSM will keep all backup images (Level 0, physical DBspaces backu, logical logs backup, config files backup) in a specific path in filesystem. PSM yet to have housekeeping tool on the…
Submitted
Make changes in the Informix backup process using onbar
Hi,
I am using onbar utility to take backup of 4TB database using 12 threads and it took 8-9 hours for complete 0 level. I feel IBM needs to make changes in the Informix backup process. Whenever back…
Submitted
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
TOP 14 RFE’s
Do not forget to vote for one or several of those RFE’s if they fit your requirements.
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.
For this issue, I did not have anything special. So I’m just dropped the last query I used today checking where my clobs and blobs are.
select a.tabname, b.colname, c.name
from systables a, syscolumns b, sysxtdtypes c
where a.tabid = b.tabid
and b.extended_id = c.extended_id
and (c.name = "clob" or c.name = "blob")
order by 1,2;
Gary Ben-Israel
Informix corner
Fix list for Informix Server 12.10.xC8 and PID 12.10.xC8W1
Informix Server provides periodic fixes for release 12.10. The following list is the most recent report of fixes for customer-reported defects in Version 12.10.xC8W1 and 12.10.xC8. This report combines both Windows and UNIX-specific defect fixes, and is more current than the defect information included in the product release.
List of bugs fixed can be reached at:
Use the MongoDB API with Informix on Cloud
IBM
Bluemix Data Connect. Data Connect is a cloud-based data refinery that transforms raw data into relevant and actionable information. Find data…
https://developer.ibm.com/clouddataservices/docs/informix/get-started/use-mongodb-api-informix-cloud/
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
- Blogs, Videos, News and more at http://planetids.com *** Up to date feeds from many blogs ***
- Ben Thompson’s blog at: https://informixdba.wordpress.com/
More Blogs and Wikis
- The Lenexa view at: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/smoe?lang=en
- Fernando Nunes at http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/
- 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/
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
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
Editor: Gary Ben-Israel
For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org
