IIUG Insider (Issue #257) December 2021

Highlights: IIUG 2021 Survey is still open

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

Happy New Year to all Informix users.

In December 2020 I wrote: “2020 was not an easy year. I hope 2021 will be better.” It was not.

In 2022 we are trying to move from virtual to hybrid meetings.

Our next board meeting, in February, is planned as a hybrid meeting with some attending virtually and some in person. Since no one knows what the Covid situation will be in February it may be another virtual meeting as our meetings were in 2021.

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

Highlights

IIUG 2021 Survey is Still Open

The IIUG board has prepared a very short survey about the state of Informix in 2021. It is a shorter version of our 2020 survey; some questions are the same. The goal is to track down changes in the community with the minimum effort. The estimated time to complete the survey is 3 minutes on any device, since there may be at most one answer that needs typing.

Please, go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/IIUG2021 to complete your survey. Your participation is of great importance.

The survey will be open until January 31st.. As before, we will communicate the results through IIUG channels. Thank you for your time!

Ognjen Orel

Informix Corner

IIUG World 2021 Sponsor Session Replays

IIUG 2021 Virtual Conference Sessions by Sponsors will be posted to our Informix Tech Talks on YouTube channel on January 10th, 2022. Watch the sessions at:

https://www.youtube.com/c/InformixTechTalksbytheIIUG

C02. Everything you wanted to know about the IBM Community – Doug Moran, IBM

C03. FOUR J’s – Genero: the 21st Century 4GL – Bryn Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer / Four J’s

B04. Informix Performance Tuning 38 years of lessons learned – Art Kagel, ASK Database Management

A05. Making the most of Informix Primary Storage Manager – Tom Beebe, xDB Systems

B06. Informix SQL Performance Tuning TipsJeff Filippi, Integrated Data Consulting, Inc.

C06. Informix Benchmarks on Cloud Systems – Lester Knutsen, Advanced DataTools Corporation

Wednesday Keynote – Dr. Seth Dobrin

C07.Querix – Cloud-Native development in 4GLHubert Hoelzl, Querix

C08. Extend your 4GL resources with Four Js Professional ServicesMike Folcher, WW Delivery Director, Professional Services / Four J’s

B11. Happy Database=Happy Life – keep Informix up and running – Mike Walker, xDB Systems

C13. 4GL is dead, long live BDL! – Laurent Galais, USA & Canada Technical Support Manager / Four J’s

C14. Developing IoT and Hybrid applications with 4GL: am I dreaming or is this really – Eric Vercelletto for Querix

IBM Informix Roadmap on YouTube

In case you missed IBM Community Day 2021, check out this replay of the IBM Informix Roadmap presented by Karthik Gopalakrishnan, Product Manager, Informix.

https://youtu.be/2cp26SrQkLs

Informix Tech Talks on YouTube

234 subscribers, 23 great videos. Subscribe to our channel and enjoy great content.

All Past Tech Talks:
https://www.iiug.org/en/category/techtalks/

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.

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: 99 (+0)

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: 92 (+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: 85 (+0)

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

Happy New Year

Informix 4GL Resources for Developers

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 was nothing new in the past 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.