IIUG Insider (Issue #253) August 2021

Highlights: Don’t Forget to Register for IIUG World 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.

Editorial

My first Insider was issue 56 February 2005. The IIUG was preparing for our first conference in conjunction with IDUG. IBM announced Informix 10 and the future looked promising.

More than 16 years later, many of the promises were not kept.

But Informix is still here. As editor I am struggling to provide useful content. But it is becoming more difficult. HCL owns support and development. They no longer supply technical content. Corners like support corner no longer exist. Projects like Chat with the lab are discontinued.

Searching the news, you cannot find anything Informix related. Why is that? We lost what Informix was so good at on top of its great technology. Partners and applications. This is what Arvind Krishna, IBM’s CEO, once said.

…

After building the security business, Krishna learned the channel inside and out when he took command of the Informix database business in the mid2000s. “That’s when I really got to understand the channel really, really well because Informix was almost 90 percent a channel business—mostly resellers,” he said. “But every one of them had a secret sauce. Some could solve a problem in their sleep. You would call up these guys and they could tell you ‘Just change this knob and you are fixed.’ Others would be building massive applications on top of Informix. But the application was what the clients wanted, not Informix.”

For Krishna, the Informix experience gave him a profound appreciation for how partners of all kinds team with a company like IBM to build a successful business. “Their expertise and [the value they bring] to the client is what helps us make money,” he said. “You actually have to cover the gamut [of the partner ecosystem] to succeed as a business,” he said.

…

CRN

There is some good news, an updated Informix Roadmap was presented to the IIUG Board last month. The Roadmap will be presented, to the public, with at least one session at IIUG World 2021. So, don’t forget to register to be one of the first to learn the future of Informix.

Gary Ben-Israel

IIUG Insider Editor

IIUG Board of Directors

gary@iiug.org

Highlights

Don’t Forget to Register for IIUG World 2021!

Join us October 5-7, 2021 for the first ever Virtual Technical Event, IIUG World 2021. Sessions begin each day at 10:00 AM EDT.

Your paid registration includes:

  • Access to two Certification Preparation Tutorials held after IIUG World 2021

  • One complimentary pass to take the newly released Official IBM Informix 14 .10 certification exam

  • Three half day of technical sessions live or via replay

Great News! We were able to confirm our keynote speakers for this year’s IIUG World event. It is always nice when your first choices are available and willing to help with the event.

  • Arvind Krishna – IBM Chairman and CEO

  • Seth Dobrin – IBM Chief AI Officer

Speaker confirmations are in progress. Here is a sampling of some of the topics that will be presented:

  • Informix Roadmap and licensing

  • Informix in Cloudpak for Data

  • What’s new in SQL?

  • Best Practice(s) Using Keystores

  • Easy App Development using Informix Containers

  • Safeguard Your Data with Encrypted Backups

  • Learn All About Backups from Secondaries

  • What’s New with Informix Replication?

  • Going from Development to Production with IBM Informix Editions

  • What’s new in the Kernel?

  • PSM

  • Analytics with Python, Notebooks and Informix

  • Timeseries and Covid

  • Cognos 101: More than a reporting system

Don’t forget to check out our Sponsors:

Platinum: IBM

Gold: Four Js and Querix

Silver: Ask Database Management, Integrated Data Consulting, LLC and xDB Systems

Bronze: Advanced DataTools

For additional information and to keep current with the addition of speakers and sessions visit the NEW conference website.

Register for IIUG World 2021

Rhonda Hackenburg

IIUG Board and Planning Committee

Informix Corner

Seeking Your Participation in Analyst Research for IBM Informix

Gartner has kicked off Magic Quadrant research for the Cloud Database Management Systems

We are seeking delighted IBM Data and AI users who will participate in the Gartner Magic Quadrant research. Participation will only take about 15 – 20 minutes of your time, and your answers will be aggregated anonymously: Gartner will not publish your name, nor your organization’s name.

Why participate?

This is an excellent way for you to: 1) help shape market opinion about IBM products, 2) help your industry peers learn from your experience, and 3) help our product teams learn from your product experience from the published Magic Quadrant

  1. To proceed with a review, please reach out to Kathryn DuPont (schwab@ca.ibm.com), who will provide you with a custom URL

  2. Use the custom URL to register on the Gartner Peer Insights platform, with either your business email or your LinkedIn profile

  • Caution: Gartner will reject Gmail or other ‘freemium’ emails

  • Reviews from Business Partners will be rejected by Gartner – they only accept end-user/customer reviews – and they will check.

3. Check your spam/junk folder for a request for confirmation from Gartner, and proceed with confirming

  • Caution: Gartner will reject unconfirmed registrations

4. Proceed with your review

  • Caution: Gartner will reject any copy/pasted material

  • Reviews can take 3-5 business days to publish

5. To receive the $25 USD-valued VISA gift card (applicable worldwide):

  • Your review must publish and it be submitted via the IBM-provided, customized link.

6. Your reviews are anonymous (your name and company name will not be published)

  • Reviews take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete

Informix Tech Talks on YouTube

Due to the upcoming IIUG World 2021 Technical Event, Tech Talks will be taking a break this month.

The IIUG is still looking for more speakers who are interested in presenting for an upcoming “Tech Talks” webcast. If you have something you want to share with the IIUG Community don’t be shy. Your presentation only needs to be between 1/2 – 1 hour in length.

If you are interested, simply submit the Speaker Abstract Worksheet and note this is for the Tech Talks webcast. We will contact you.

Check out past Tech Talks at https://www.iiug.org/en/category/techtalks/

Informix Training

Advanced DataTools Training:

Informix for Database Administrators Training Course – September 20-24, 2021
Advanced Informix Performance Tuning Course – October 25-29, 2021

https://advancedatatools.com/training/course-schedule/

RFE Corner

IBM has an RFE – Request For Enhancements website.

https://ibm-data-and-ai.ideas.aha.io/?project=INFX

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

Allow trusted context to accept CIDR notation

Add support for system versioned tables

Add lock wait time to oncheck

INFORMIX AUTO INDEX

Document “autotune” paramerer for cpu and aio in the onconfig.std file.

Implement LIMIT clause in DELETE Statement

Allow MAX_PDQPRIORITY to be configurable per user.

Implement CREATE OR REPLACE option for triggers/views/synonyms/row types

Popular (Over 50 votes)

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: 95 (+1)

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: 86 (+0)

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: 81 (+2)

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

InformixHQ repository

sysmaster tables gone

Tracing single session

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.

Technical articles

https://www.oninitgroup.com/technical-articles/

https://www.oninitgroup.com/faq-items/cloud-backups-with-informix-14-10/

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

Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines

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

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.

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