IIUG Insider (Issue #213) March 2018

Highlights: The IIUG board met at the IBM Think conference

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

March 18-22 I attended the IBM Think conference in Las Vegas. The conference was mainly about security and cloud. Nothing about databases in general and Informix particularly. But still it was a huge and impressive conference with many interesting sessions and insight about future technologies IBM is involved in like quantum computing. On Sunday, March 18, the IIUG board participated in the IBM community day with other IBM champions. In one of the discussions Stuart presented the IIUG so Informix was mentioned after all.

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

Highlights

The IIUG Board met at the IBM Think conference

The IIUG Board of Directors held a one day meeting at the IBM Think conference in Las Vegas.

It was a short but productive meeting. The main part of the meeting was discussing the future of Informix, and yes Informix has a future, with HCL technical executive team. We met with Pradeep Muthalpuredathe, Karen Qualley, Shawn Moe and Pradeep Natarajan. I hope that there will be a lot of things happening with Informix in the near future and believe that issues that where forgotten when part of the Informix activity was passed to HCL, like documentation will be resolved.

So don’t lose faith. Informix is here to stay and is still the best.

Gary Ben-Israel

Conference Corner

IIUG WORLD 2018 – Call for Speakers Opening Soon

IIUG World 2018 will be hosted by the 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.

We will soon be sending an email announcing the submission website is open and provide you instructions regarding where to submit a brief overview of your topic. The email will also share the benefits of becoming an IIUG World 2018 presenter. We would like to thank our past speakers who helped make our IIUG events the best Informix event offered and would be happy to have you return. We are always looking for new speakers who have a passion for Informix and/or related software to share their knowledge. So, start thinking of some topics you are interested in sharing with our IIUG attendees and help us make this event the best ever.

IIUG World 2018 registration should open shortly after the call for speakers.

Information regarding the current IIUG event, 2018, will be found at www.iiug.org/iiugworld. This includes everything you will need to know about the current event. This site is updated as new information is ready for release.

Hope to see you there.

IIUG World 2018 Planning Committee

RFE Corner

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 idea of the RFE corner is to provide a digest on new Informix RFEs and make those RFEs more visible and accessible to the community, so you can vote on those that are also important to you. By actively participating 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.

TOP 15 RFE’s

Abstract Status Votes Progr.
In-Place Alter for varchar, lvarchar and boolean Under Consideration 59 0
Backup from RSS or HDR Secondaries using ontape, onunload, onbar, dbexport Under Consideration 59 +1
SQL interface to obtain the temporary space usage (tables, hash, sorts…) Under Consideration 50 0
Obtain the query plan of a running query Under Consideration 49 +1
Request to track and save a time stamp for last time an index was used. Nee… Delivered 40 0
Backup Individual database, not entire instance Submitted 35 +1
ALTER owner of database objects after creation Submitted 29 0
Implement CREATE OR REPLACE option for stored procedures Under Consideration 27 0
Informix should be able to change owner on tables and any other objects Submitted 25 +1
New feature to have FORCE_DDL_EXEC functionality for all DDL changes Submitted 24 ?
Implementation of regular expressions (adding to LIKE/MATCHES functions) Under consideration 23 +1
Ability to re-create views and procedures without dependent objects being dropped (34762 Under consideration 20 0
Need an onmode option to terminate orphaned, tightly coupled global transac… Under Consideration 19 0
Allow triggers install/updates without taking an outage for the box (57792) Under Consideration 18 0
Allow “group commit” as other RDBMS (45166) Under Consideration 18 0

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.

Gary Ben-Israel

Informix News

How Informix can fit Your Database Needs

IBM Systems Magazine

March 2018 | by Ken Milberg

http://ibmsystemsmag.com/aix/administrator/systemsmanagement/informix-database-needs/?platform=hootsuite

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/iiug
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/IIUG.Informix
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

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.