Highlights: No highlights
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:
Table of Contents
Editorial
Last month I wrote:
“Nothing is happening with Informix. No blogs, no news, no marketing material.” I was hoping it is just a slow month but it has not changed.
This is why for the first time since February 2005, my first Insider, there are no highlights.
Not only can we not find anything about Informix anywhere, but if you search the web this is the last thing you want to find, Bill Karwin saying: “I don’t think buying or learning Informix would be a good strategy at this point.”
Answered by Mike Adams: “Conclusion — Informix isn’t growing”.
Worse, HCL is doing nothing and they have decided that the IIUG is no longer relevant. Hence they do not work with us and are trying to fight the IIUG by creating their own website and trying to create a new user community. Why a company interested in a product ignore over 20,000 users is beyond my understanding.
What can we do? The IIUG has a major role in keeping Informix alive. We should continue.
If you have content regarding Informix send it to me. If you blog send me the link. If you have any contact with HCL let them know you feel bad about their attitude towards Informix users.
So, my conclusions regarding Informix are:
Buying and learning Informix is still a good strategy.
If we want Informix to grow we need to start doing something.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
gary@iiug.org
Conference corner
IIUG 2018 – Save the Date
After several months of decisions and negotiations, the contract for IIUG 2018 has been signed.
And the winner is…
Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel, Washington D.C. and will be held October 28th – November 1st, 2018.
This is a beautiful hotel and convenient to Reagan National Airport. It is also convenient to many historical sites, museums and other local attractions Washington D.C. is noted for. To learn more about this venue check out www.marriott.com/waspy.
Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.
Hope to see you there.
IIUG 2018 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, 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 September 2017
Apparently, the vacations period did not produce lots of creativity in terms of RFEs, let’s check
Add ‘#’-sign as comment identifier in dbaccess
To make migration from ISQL sql scripts towards dbaccess scripts easier it would be benificial that dbaccess would support the ‘#’ as comment lidentifier. This identifier is accepted in ISQL and 4GL and it would be great if dbaccess would also support this.
Request to add the ‘#’ sign recognized as a comments in dbaccess Votes: 3
Change MIRROR config on-fly
On storage migration , where the use of MIRROR isn’t active on day-by-day will require a restart of the engine to active this functionality.
Request to allow change the onconfig MIRROR* parameters on-fly using “onmode -wf/-wm” Votes: 1
TOP 14 RFE’s
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 |
| Appendable External Tables | Submitted | 15 (+1) |
| ‘onstat -g mem’ should give a complete picture of all memory usage | Under Consideration | 7(+1) |
| Ability to VM snapshot an On-Line Informix database | Under Consideration | 6(+6) |
| Make adoption of forest-of-trees indices easier with existing large tables | Submitted | 2(+1) |
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
Informix corner
Informix Open Database Drivers
A new set of open source database drivers available to you at: https://github.com/OpenInformix
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.
This time I will tell you about a problem we had restoring an Informix database.
Our Informix version is 12.1 FC4. We moved the database to new storage. As there was no activity since the backup when we restored we did not restore the logical logs. The result was that the temporary dbspaces where not created and we had to do another restore.
Is it a bug and if so is it fixed in FC9? I have no idea.
Just note that when you restore always restore the logical logs.
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 athttp://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
