Highlights: IIUG virtual conference, 5-7 October 2021
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.
Table of Contents
Editorial
We are not back to where we were in 2019. So, the best we can do under the circumstances is offer virtual events and do virtual meetings. I hope we will be able to have board meeting towards the end of the year. Time will tell.
In the meantime, we highly recommend our YouTube channel: “Informix Tech Talks by the IIUG” The URL is: https://www.youtube.com/c/InformixTechTalksbytheIIUG. Join our 166 subscribers and our hundreds viewers.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
gary@iiug.org
Highlights
Save the Dates – IIUG Virtual Technical Event, 5-7 October 2021
After some interesting setbacks in our planning, we are finally able to announce the dates for our first ever IIUG Virtual Technical Event. Save the dates and join us October 5 – 7 for this year’s event.
Sessions will be offered during different times allowing ALL our members an opportunity to attend all or part of the event. Each day will be a combination of 1-hour pre-recorded and live presentations. We have opted for the pre-recorded sessions to allow the speaker to chat with attendees during the presentation. We are also allowing discussion opportunities at the end of the session. We are planning to have one or two keynote speakers.
We opened the Call for Speakers back in February and it will remain open until August 31, 2021. That means you still have time to visit the IIUG website to submit your Speaker Abstract. Our goal is to offer the same quality of sessions you have seen in the past but in an online format.
As you know, these events are driven by the Informix user community. Our goal has always been to include our Informix users as session presenters. If you aren’t sure about a topic to present, feel free to reach out to a Board member for suggestions. If you are uncomfortable speaking in front of you peers, this new format is ideal for you. Now is the time to share your knowledge with the Informix Community.
Continue to visit the IIUG website and watch you email for updates as they become available. As always, if you have any questions, you can contact us at iiug@iiug.org or you can contact me directly at rhonda@iiug.org.
Thank you for your patience as we work through the challenges of our first virtual event.
Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board and Conference Committee
Informix Corner
Bloor white paper: IBM Informix and Edge Analytics
Why analysts think IBM Informix is the right database for Edge analytics
According to Gartner 75% of enterprise data will be generated at the “edge” by 2025, compared to 10% in 2019. On the one hand this will be driven by an increased desire for real-time capabilities with minimum latency and, on the other, it will be enabled by the increased availability of 5G technology .
While Informix has been proven at enterprise scale for more than twenty years, edge is an emerging use case, which should be reassuring to any existing users that might have been concerned about continuing investment into this database product.
Discover what is required from a database that supports edge computing and, more generally, Internet of Things (IoT) as analysts at Bloor Research examine the suitability of IBM Informix for supporting these environments.
Informix Tech Talks by the IIUG Update
1. We have over 160 subscribers for our YouTube channel. We have nine videos on our channel. We have the URL https://www.youtube.com/c/InformixTechTalksbytheIIUG
2. We have 9 videos on YouTube our Channel
IIUG 2020 Webcasts:
– Informix v.14.10.xC4W1 Technical Deep Dive webcast
– Informix v.14.10.xC4W1 Technical Deep Dive webcast – Replication
– Informix v.14.10.xC4W1 Technical Deep Dive webcast – Java and system administration
– IBM Informix v.14.10.xC4 Chat with the Labs – GSKit to Open SSL
– IBM Informix CloudPak and Modernization November 11, 2020
IIUG Tech Talks 2021
– Informix SQL Performance Tuning Tips by Jeff Filippi 3/25/2021
– Informix Tech Talks: Three ways to capture data changes when they happen! by Art Kagel
– Migrating and Upgrading to Informix 14 in-house or in the cloud. The easy and the hard way. by Lester Knutsen
– Informix TechTalks for the IIUG: Creating Informix Non OS Users by Lester Knutsen
3. We have a presentation for May
Informix Tech Talks: Informix Large Table Operations by Ben Thompson
Date: Thursday, May 27, 2021 2:00pm EDT
Title: Informix Large Table Operations
Description: Many databases are getting larger as systems mature and organizations put more value on data. Size can present challenges for a DBA when making schema changes especially where low downtime is a requirement. This presentation covers some of the methods that can be used to undertake large table operations and provides tips on choosing the most suitable method for a given situation.
Bio: Ben Thompson is Principal DBA at Sky Betting & Gaming, where the DBA Squad looks after busy OLTP with demanding uptime requirements. He is a past speaker at IIUG events and increasingly infrequently writes articles for a blog called InformedMix.
Register at https://iiuginc.my.webex.com/iiuginc.my/j.php?RGID=rfc268f7120700ca1b85d8c4cb4179f48
4. We are still looking for a presentation for our June Tech Talks
For those of you who have attended one of our Tech Talks, you can see we are covering different topics. If you have technical knowledge or have some tips using Informix or Informix related software, please contact us at iiug@iiug.org. Just a simple ½ – 1 hour presentation vi our WebEx account. We are prerecording the presentation which will allow you to respond via chat to any questions your audience may have.
Lester Knutsen
IIUG Board
Why should you already be upgrading to Informix 14.10?
In this second article of the series, we would like to focus on the enhancements and performance improvements that have gone into our Business Continuity and Scaling solutions.
Benefits: 14.10 has the most robust solutions to keep your data always available!
- Enterprise Replication is a very powerful tool in your HA/Disaster Recovery toolkit and in 14.10 it is easier to setup and migrate your data with the enhancements put in for “cdr migrate server”.
- Now you do not have to drop, recreate, and populate your secondaries when you upgrade because we have added conversion for HDR and RSS secondary servers!
- Sending and applying transactions to secondary (RSS, SDS, HDR) instances has been optimized for performance under heavily loaded conditions
- Performance tests show up to 5X increase in throughput when compared to Informix v.12 benefiting all customers using these data availability solutions
- Similar improvement observed in crash recovery performance
- Query survival across inaccessible nodes allows you to get results, even if one of your nodes is not available.
Be sure to check back here next month to see more reasons why you need to start that upgrade now!
Prior IIUG Conference Events
View and download the presentation from all the past IIUG Conferences at the IIUG Knowledge Library. Use your IIUG login to see the pages.
https://www.iiug.org/en/informix-knowledge-library/
The following conferences are available:
IIUG 2019
September 22 – 26, 2019
Torrance Marriott Redondo Beach
Los Angeles, California
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2019/
IIUG 2018
October 28 – November 1, 2018
Renaissance Marriott Arlington Capital View
Arlington (Washington D.C.) Virginia
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2018/
IIUG 2017
April 23-27, 2017
Marriott Raleigh City Center
Raleigh North Carolina, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2017/
IIUG 2016
May 4-8, 2016
Sawgrass Marriott
Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2016/
IIUG 2015
April 26-30, 2015
San Diego Marriott Mission Valley
Sand Diego, California, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2015/
IIUG 2014
April 27-May 1, 2014
JW Marriott Miami
Miami, Florida, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2014/
IIUG 2013
April 21-25, 2013
San Diego Marriott Mission Valley San Diego,
California, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2013/
IIUG 2012
April 22-25, 2012
San Diego Marriott Mission Valley San Diego,
California, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2012/
IIUG 2011
May 15-18, 2011
Marriott Kansas City-Overland Park
Overland Park, Kansas, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2011/
IIUG 2010
April 22-28, 2010
Marriott Kansas City-Overland Park
Overland Park, Kansas, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2010/
IIUG 2009
April 26-29, 2009
Marriott Kansas City-Overland Park
Overland Park, Kansas, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2009/
IIUG 2008
April 27-30, 2008
Marriott Kansas City-Overland Park
Overland Park, Kansas, USA
https://www.iiug.org/en/knowledge-library-conference-2008/
Lester Knutsen
RFE Corner
IBM has an RFE – Request For Enhancements website.
Please visit this site to vote for your favorite enhancements and place new requests. It is friendly and has a nice look and feel.
Recent
Create a real IDS driver for Tableau
CSDK support for static links under the latest GCC releases
Connection pooling should not lock databases if all connections are closed
Identify User created procedure
Solution for Awkward-Looking Queries in Views
Popular (Over 50 votes)
Backup from RSS or HDR Secondaries using ontape, onunload, onbar, dbexport
In HDR environments, being able to backup or export databases from and HDR, HDR read-only, or an RSS secondary server is critical. Programs like ontape, onunload, dbexport, and onbar generate locks on tables during backups and data-exports. This creates problems while applications and users using Informix try to use the system during backups in 24 x 7 x 365 production environments. Being able to backup or export data on secondary systems is critical for compliance and backup integrity.
Votes: 110 (+2)
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Obtain the query plan of a running query
Many times a DBA is called to check upon a slow process. Most of the times those processes are running a slow query.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if the query is using the best query plan or not. A DBA can reproduce the query, but it it was prepared without values or if the statistics were changed after it started there is no guarantee that the query plan seen by the DBA is the same as the running query.
We have “onstat -g pqs” which sometimes can give us a clue, but it’s mostly cryptic and undocumented. If a user has X-Windows he can try xtree, but it’s a bit strange for todays standards.
We also have SQLTRACE, but if it was not set when the query was launched it will not capture the info (and besides, due to the circular nature of the buffer it may not be there at the time we need it).
A simple pseudo-table in sysmaster could probably implement this with ease.
It could also be extended to support the “last” query plan making it easy to get the query plan in any tool
Votes: 92 (+3)
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Informix should be able to change owner on tables and any other objects
If user=informix creates all database and all tables, then programmer creates table but user=informix cannot change it. Only drop it.
Votes: 83 (+3)
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Backup Individual database, not entire instance
Need a mechanism, similar to ontape, to backup a live database (as opposed to entire instance), without locking it.
Votes: 75 (+1)
Created: December 24, 2018
Status: Future consideration
Gary Ben-Israel
IBM Informix Forum Corner
Join and visit the IBM Informix community forum at http://www.iiug.org/community
Recent posts
ontape -l show 100% full logs but ontape -a doesn’t flush them
Could I force drop the database?
Asking for a real IDS Tableau driver
New RFE – CSDK support for static links under the latest GCC releases
Gary Ben-Israel
Informix Resources
IIUG website
www.iiug.org
IBM Informix community
http://www.iiug.org/community
Informix Blogs and Wikis
Please note: The list below contains only blogs that were active in the last six months.
There were no blog postings in the last six months
Technical articles
Social Media
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/InformixTechTalksbytheIIUG
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25049
Twitter : https://twitter.com/iiug
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/IIUG.Informix
5.4 Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines
-
The IIUG old forums at http://www.iiug.org/forums/technical.php *** NO LONGER ACTIVE ***
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Informix Marketing channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/informixmarketing?feature=results_main
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. |
Editors: Gary Ben-Israel, Rhonda Hackenburg
For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org or rhonda@iiug.org
