Highlights: IIUG Event: When? Where? How?
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
The IIUG Board met in Madrid on July 22-23. It was our first in-person meeting since February 2020.
In addition to dealing with the ongoing tasks of maintaining the IIUG, there were two major topics to discuss. Preparing for the election of the 2023 IIUG Board and the next IIUG event.
Elections will be formally announced in October. These are challenging times for the IIUG and Informix.
We would like to have new board members with fresh ideas. If you are considering standing for elections, I recommend reading the page about elections in the About IIUG section in our home page. Especially the Board guidelines document. Please note, we are in the process of updating this page. I’m available for questions if you have any questions.
I will discuss the IIUG event separately in the next section.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
gary@iiug.org
Highlights
IIUG Event: When? Where? How?
We were planning an in-person event in November 2022. However, by the time we got the budget from IBM it was too late to hold a November event. We are still looking at a possible event in December 2022, but it is doubtful we can make that deadline.
At our board meeting we had a discussion with Al Martin who informed us about a new IBM initiative to hold an event for all user groups in Q1 2023. The first two days will be IBM software content and then will spit to individual user group content where sessions and speakers will be managed by the user group. We believe that this will be best for our users and will show the IIUG’s support to IBM.
If IBM does not hold this event in 2023, we would like to have our own event in 2023.
We would like your input on the following questions.
When would you like us to have a event?
What is your preferred location? West coast, East coast, Central?
Should it be in a city that is easy to get to from the US, Europe and South America?
What is your price range?
Most important, will you attend an in-person event? If not, will you attend a virtual event?
Please take a minute to answer these questions. You can send answers to me or any other IIUG board member.
We need your input. It is hard to plan a event without it.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Board of Directors
Informix Corner
IIUG Board of Directors Elections – IIUG Membership Updates
It is soon time to begin accepting nominations for the IIUG Board Of Directors; we will be announcing this shortly.
We want to be able to reach all members who want to participate in the selection of your next IIUG Board or submit a nomination. To reach you, we need our membership to confirm their contact information, specifically your email.
I am asking you to take a few minutes to verify your membership information and keep our membership current and accurate. To do this:
- Use the Member Login page to login.
- Click the “Membership” tab.
- Review your contact information and click “Update Profile”. Please click on update profile even if you have made no changes. This verifies you are still an active member.
- In order to receive the election emails, make sure you use the “OptIn/OptOut” tab to confirm your status is OptIn. If not , you can use this to update you Optin status.
If you know anyone who is not currently a member and would like to be, they can join using the Join IIUG link on the home page. Don’t forget, IIUG membership is free.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Thanks for helping us!
Rhonda Hackenburg
rhonda@iiug.org
Informix Training
Free Informix Tutorials Videos – a step by step approach to using Informix Database Servers are available at https://advancedatatools.com/tech-info/informix-tutorials/
Servers – available at https://advancedatatools.com/tech-info/informix-tutorials/
Lester Knutsen
Informix Tech Talks on YouTube
Upcoming Informix Tech Talks
Title: Informix and Social Media: Reminding the World of Informix
Date: Thursday, August 18, 2022
Time: 2:00 pm EDT
Strategies to support our favorite database in social media and to keep Informix relevant for today’s developers and their employers.
Speaker Bio: Art Kagel
President and Principal Consultant, ASK Database Management
www.askdbmgt.com
Art Kagel is a consultant in database design and administration with a concentration on server performance. He has worked with Informix products since the first SQL was released in 1983. After over fourteen years of filling various roles for Bloomberg Corporation, Mr. Kagel returned to consulting in 2007, mainly supporting organizations using Informix database, but also accepting other projects in database management, database architecture, and data-based applications design and development. Mr. Kagel is a recipient of the International Informix Users Group’s (IIUG) Directors’ Award and has been named an IBM Champion for Information Management by IBM Corporation thirteen times through 2021. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the IIUG and the Rutgers University Big Data Advisory Board.
Please register – Tech Talks August 18
Past Informix Tech Talks Replays
Replays from Two Informix Tech Talks for 4GL Developers By Reuben Barclay, 4Js from Thursday, July 21, 2022
- Informix Tech Talks – Transforming Your System From Informix-4gl to Genero – The Many Options and First Steps By Reuben Barclay, 4Js
Replay on YouTube here – https://youtu.be/iyoS71-lU9E
When transforming from Informix-4gl to Genero there are many options available to you. Over 20 years of development effort has gone into the Genero toolbox and it can be tempting to use all these new features at your disposal at once. In this presentation Reuben makes you aware of the many tools in the Genero toolbox. He demonstrates the first steps in the different directions you can take with these various tools to make sure that you successfully add value as you transform from Informix-4gl to Genero.
- Informix Tech Talks – Wordle 4 Genero By Reuben Barclay, 4Js
Replay on YouTube here – https://youtu.be/ONVz4OMLtLM
Wordle is a web-based word game created and developed by a software engineer Josh Wardle who originally created a game for himself and his partner to play. It became a viral phenomenon with millions of players playing every day. In this presentation Reuben answers the question, “What if Josh had been a Genero developer and written Wordle using Genero? ” Reuben will demonstrate features and syntax that Four Js has added to Genero that show this would have been possible.
More info at:
https://www.iiug.org/en/2022/06/16/two-tech-talks-for-4gl-developers-by-4js/
Replays from WAIUG Virtual Meeting July 14th, 2022 are available!
- Welcome by Thomas Beebe and Informix Roadmap by Shripad Sonavnay – https://youtu.be/oA4IQsqbB0I
- Informix 14 Certification by Stuart Litel – https://youtu.be/M2ueORwII-c
- Informix Auditing by Mike Walker – https://youtu.be/aOmW7jkhu4s
- Auditing is important to most organizations. This presentation will show how to use informix’s built in auditing capabilities, including how to set it up, what it can do, and what it cannot do. It will also cover the new options to be able to audit directly to syslog.
- CDC: A Beginners Guide by Paul Watson – https://youtu.be/cXYCYa8Z4Sg
- Change Data Capture or CDC is a very useful weapon to have in your arsenal, whether it is just a quick what happened or a full blown forensic tool However, many people have never heard of it or are scared to use it. This presentation will examine the various APIs show how to build a working DBA tool
More info at:
https://www.iiug.org/en/2022/06/16/waiug-virtual-meeting-july-14th-2022/
Visit the WAIUG website for more information – https://www.waiug.org
Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel
Our channel on YouTube for Informix Users has over 74 Informix Technical Videos, with over 288 subscribers and more the 1,000 views last month! This YouTube Channel will be a place for Informix how-to videos.
Informix Tech Talk YouTube Channel Videos
Past Informix Tech Talks Replays
In Search of Tech Talks Speakers
There is no presentation for our April Tech Talks. Instead, the IIUG World 2021 Conference Session Replays were published for your review.
We are looking for additional speakers and especially any new speakers to share your Informix knowledge with our user Community via the IIUG Tech Talks. We will assist you in preparing for your Tech Talks presentation by prerecording your session. This will allow you to be available to answer any questions that come up in the chat during you presentation.
If you are interested in producing a 15 – 45 minute presentation, please contact either Lester Knutsen or Rhonda Hackenburg for additional information.
Rhonda Hackenburg
rhonda@iiug.org
Proud to be the First Person to Receive the Informix Administration Badge
After several months of hard work, Informix Administration Exam definition was completed by the IBM and IIUG team in charge of developing the Exam.
The process of deployment in a controlled environment was started in May and me, representing deister, an IBM Partner and also being part of IIUG Board was appointed as the first person to be able to take the Exam and check that everything goes smoothly.
Let me tell you that this was a great honor but also a huge responsibility. This Exam has been designed from scratch, replacing old Certification Exams and trying to fix its issues like misleading questions, ambiguous answers, etc. but also including questions about new features present in Informix 12.10 and 14.10
As an Informix expert for more than 25 years failing to pass this exam would be a dishonor and would show me that I’m not as expert as I thought. 😉
Fortunately, I got the proper score and passed the Exam, getting my Informix Administration Badge. First in the world to get this honor but also a responsibility for the rest of my live, keeping pushing my knowledge in IBM Informix and trying to learn more and help others to use this great database product.
And now, what all you are expecting: “Tell me about the exam”…
Well, exam is taken from your office or your home. you need to be in a room, totally alone and without noise. you’ll be proctored remotely using a Webex connection. So, you need a camera to show proctor you’re alone and quiet and to show your ID. All details will be explained to Exam goes publicly available.
The exam has mainly technical questions, so a DBA should be comfortable with it. Questions about new and not so new features like Connection Manager, Admin tasks, high availability, enterprise replication, etc. are present in Exam. At least in the exam I did 😉
Good news, questions are exposed clearly and answers and understandable. Not tricky questions nor tricky answers also. Exam is not easy. It requires Informix technical knowledge but if you’re a current Informix DBA and you can learn a little bit about features you don’t use too much in daily basis, you’ll be able to pass the Exam.
So, be prepared to get your badge. Informix Administration Exam will be available very soon.
Vicente Salvador
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
NUMA aware memory allocations.
Improve timestamp format in message and backup logs (ISO-8601)
Space Optimization tasks monitoring
enhancements to sysprocedures table and dbschema utility
informixhq Relate Dashbords Query with timestamp filter
Onconfig parameter to disable automatic registration of datablades
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: 102 (+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: 96 (+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: 86 (+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
varchar maximum length of 254 with an index
Gary Ben-Israel
Informix Resources
Not a member, become an IIUG member and keep updated on all things Informix. It’s free.
Not a member, join The IBM Informix community and connect with other Informix data experts.
Informix Requests for Enhancements.
Technical Articles
https://www.oninitgroup.com/technical-articles/
https://www.oninitgroup.com/faq-items/cloud-backups-with-informix-14-10/
Over 10 Years of Informix Webcast Replays
Over 30 Years of Informix Blog Posts
Social Media
YouTube
LinkedIn
Twitter
Facebook
Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines
-
The IIUG old forums at http://www.iiug.org/forums/technical.php *** NO LONGER ACTIVE ***
-
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
When would you like us to have a event?
Anytime except winter.
What is your preferred location? West coast, East coast, Central?
If it’s USA it really does not make much difference to me. West coast is further but often cost is similar.
Should it be in a city that is easy to get to from the US, Europe and South America?
Yes but changing flights is not the main issue. From previous conferences the biggest issue for me is the airport transfer at the US end. With some exceptions, public transport in the US is not very good. I think all previous locations were fine except Sawgrass (Jacksonville) which, lovely as it is when you were there, is a long and expensive taxi ride from the airport. My company’s contribution is capped so I am paying my own money to attend and $100 taxi rides both ways plus tip are something of a culture shock! I appreciate attendees can club together but this is more difficult on the outward leg.
What is your price range?
Roughly speaking attending costs me about $3000. If I speak this reduces to about $2000 and my company will contribute $1000. This is ok especially if I can make a vacation out of it. I think for non-US attendees the strength of the US dollar at the moment is a deterrent.
Most important, will you attend an in-person event? If not, will you attend a virtual event?
I would definitely attend a virtual event.
I would maybe attend an in-person event. My motivations for doing so would be networking and the greater level of involvement I would get from doing so. I would be less motivated if attendance in person was likely to be low. I would also take the opportunity – as I have in the past – to see the local area or beyond.