Highlights: GreenCom case study has now been published

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
  • GreenCom case study has now been published
• RFE corner
• Calendar of events
• Informix resources
  • Informix Blogs and Wikis
  • Social media
  • Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines

Table of Contents

Editorial

Nothing is happening with Informix. No blogs, no news, no marketing material.

Informix support no longer provides content. So there is not much to edit. I hope it is just a slow month.

If you have any content you would like to publish please send it to me. I cannot invent stuff. All I can do is report. I tried waiting a while but better a short Insider than nothing.

Enjoy.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
gary@iiug.org

Highlights

GreenCom case study has now been published

Some good news: the GreenCom case study has now been published, and is live on ibm.com. You can find it here:

Full webpage version: https://ibm.co/2fOuPct

Summary in case studies database: https://ibm.co/2wgNpkt

Please feel free to share the link to the full version on social media, send it to your clients and prospects. I will share some social tiles soon to push the message on social media.

Gary Ben-Israel

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 August 2017

Slow motion in Summer, probably many people took vacations in the northern hemisphere

Allow disabling automatic Next Extent calculations
Informix automatically doubles the Next Extent size for every 16 extents on a table. This can lead to important waste of space on big tables
Request to have the possibility to disable this automatic next extent size increase Votes: 2

Make adoption of forest-of-trees indices easier with existing large tables
Rebuilding an index as a FOT is not supported using “alter fragment on index init”. This would be useful to avoid dropping and later re-adding primary keys and referencing foreign keys.
Request to make possible the transformation of a regular index to Forest of Trees, including small downtime and avoid re-creation of primary keys and foreign keys Votes: 2

TOP 14 RFE’s

Abstract	Status	Votes	Progr.
In-Place Alter for varchar, lvarchar and boolean	Under Consideration	59	+1
Backup from RSS or HDR Secondaries using ontape, onunload, onbar, dbexport	Under Consideration	56	+1
SQL interface to obtain the temporary space usage (tables, hash, sorts…)	Submitted	50	+2
Obtain the query plan of a running query	Under Consideration	48	+2
Request to track and save a time stamp for last time an index was used. Nee…	Submitted	40	+1
Backup Individual database, not entire instance	Submitted	34	+1
ALTER owner of database objects after creation	Submitted	29	0
Implement CREATE OR REPLACE option for stored procedures	Under Consideration	27	0
New feature to have FORCE_DDL_EXEC functionality for all DDL changes	Submitted	24	0
Allow triggers install/updates without taking an outage for the box	Under Consideration	18	0
Need an onmode option to terminate orphaned, tightly coupled global transac…	Under Consideration	18	+1
Ability to re-create views and procedures without dependent objects being dropped (34762	Under consideration	18	+1
Informix should be able to change owner on tables and any other objects	Submitted	18	+1
Allow “group commit” as other RDBMS	Under Consideration	17	0

Hot RFE’s

This new list gives visibility on hot RFE’s that are not yet in the Top 14 nor in the new RFE’s

Abstract	Status	Votes
Only in-memory Temp table	Submitted	15 (+1)
Appendable External Tables	Submitted	14
Ability to sync tables to HDR & RSS secondaries when converting from RAW to STANDARD mode	Submitted	14
‘onstat -g mem’ should give a complete picture of all memory usage	Under Consideration	6
temp Dbspace in RAM	Submitted	6(+1)
Secure the Wire Listener: Stop requiring clear text passwords	Submitted	3
Integrate user authentication among IDS/JSON/REST	Submitted	3

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 enhancement you would like to see implemented.

Eric Vercelletto

Calendar of events

September – 2017

Date	Event	Location	Contact
18	Brazil – Informix Roadshow	Sao Paulo, Brazil

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 ***

More Blogs and Wikis

• Eric Vercelletto http://www.levillageinformix.blogspot.com/ (In French)
• The Lenexa view at: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/smoe?lang=en
• Fernando Nunes at http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/
• Ben Thompson’s blog at: https://informixdba.wordpress.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

IBM Corp.

Editor: Gary Ben-Israel
For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org