IIUG Insider (Issue #265) August 2022

Highlights: IBM 2023 User Event

 

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. Informix 10 was just released and we were planning our first IIUG conference in Denver, at that time, in conjunction with IDUG.

Editing the Insider was easy. Just gathering news articles, IBM and the IIUG user community.

Now most of the work is trying to find content. HCL, in charge of support and development, has sent us content. However, we are looking for more. User content is sparse. We no longer have anyone blogging about Informix. So, we will continue with our usual sections: RFEs, IBM Informix forum center and our YouTube channel. 

In hope for better days.

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

Highlights

IBM 2023 User Event

IBM is planning a user event in Q1, 2023. Date and location are not finalized.

We still do not know how this event will be structured and how will Informix sessions fit in.

But we are working with IBM and hope it will be a success. Having Informix as part of an  IBM event is a positive message for Informix and the Informix user community. We are looking forward to it.

Stay tuned.

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

 

Informix Corner

Complementary Informix 14.10 Badge Deadline

As a paid IIUG World 2021 attendee, your registration included one complementary pass to take the new Infomrix 14.10 Badge exam.

IMPORTANT:  Your complementary pass will expire midnight September 30, 2022 EDT!  After that, you will have to pay the $150 fee to complete the exam.

Your IIUG registration also provided you access to two Informix Badge preparation tutorials. We have uploaded these tutorials for your review prior to scheduling your exams. These replays are available through COB September 5, 2022 EDT.

Informix Badge Preparation Training Part One by Carlton Doe.

Informix Badge Preparation Training Part Two by Scott Pickett.

IIUG World 2021 paid attendees should have received an email with instructions to access the tutorials.  If you did not receive this email, please contact me and I will provide you with the instructions.

Schedule your exam today!

Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board of Directors
rhonda@iiug.org

Informix 14.10 Badge

The Informix 14.10 Badge exam has is ready for you.  For a nominal fee of $150, you can complete this exam and use the on your resume for your skill set.

Once purchased you will receive an email confirmation with a code. Once you receive your code, please contact Stuart Litel (slitel@ibm.com) to get started.

The exam will be administered online.  You are required to complete the exam with a proctor from our approved list, or nominate one of your own.  You will be required to have a live webcam running as you complete the exam.   (For those not familiar with the term Proctor: The word proctor is frequently used to describe someone who oversees an exam. In today’s testing environment, a proctor will typically verify a student’s identity by checking a photo ID and then ensures academic integrity guidelines are followed during the exam.)

You will have 90 minutes to answer 60 questions.  You must achieve a 72% to receive your badge. 

If you have any questions, please contact conference@iiug.org

Schedule your exam here

Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board of Directors
rhonda@iiug.org

 

Upgrading Your Informix Server

As we are drawing closer to the end of 2022 and the plans for a major Informix revision for 2023 are firming up, we would want to encourage our customers to upgrade to the latest IBM Informix version 14.10, wherever possible. As you may already know IBM Informix 11.70 is already out of support and IBM Informix 12.10 was first released almost 10 years ago. With an upgrade to 14.10, you are protected for foreseeable future instead of running out of support with older versions. Informix 14.10 is also an excellent choice If you are considering modernizing your Informix environment by utilizing IBM Cloud Pack for Data (CP4D). Upgrading to the latest IBM Informix provides an opportunity to help our clients to optimize their IBM Informix environment and thus even further reducing the legendary low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

In addition to the database upgrade, some of you may also want to consider platform migrations as part of your upgrade planning to future-proof your Informix environment. Some of you may still be running legacy hardware platforms such as HP-UX on Itanium or PA-RISC, Solaris on Intel, or simply older Intel hardware and operating system combinations. Migrating these environments to modern hardware running Linux, not only assures you long-term support for your environment but also makes it that much closer to potential future cloud implementation, should you choose to go down the cloud path.

A few of our customers and partners have expressed difficulty in finding deep IBM Informix skills such as DBA, Performance tuning, and 4GL, especially in certain geographies, for such migration activities. The goal of HCL Lab Services is to bridge this skill gap and help our clients to continue to future-proof their business leveraging their existing and new investments with IBM Informix.

Whether you are an existing customer, partner, or new to IBM Informix, you can leverage HCL Lab Services to supplement your IBM Informix skill inventory, optimize your environment or accelerate your solution delivery and deployment. HCL Lab Services offers complementary capabilities to our loyal partner base and looks forward to working with both customers and partners in revitalizing and modernizing IBM Informix data platform environments.

Joseph Veleeparambil
HCL

 

IIUG Board of Directors Elections – IIUG Membership Updates

I see a lot of our membership is updating or confirming their contact information.  This will permit us to contact you with important Board of Director elections details and dates.  Thanks for that!  This proves our community is interested in the future of Informix.

You still have time to update your membership information.  Please 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 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: Enhancing Informix 4GL with TERMCAP Settings by Lester Knutsen
Date: Thursday, September 29, 2022
Time: 2:00 pm EDT

Description: How to work with Informix 4GL Terminal and TERMCAP capabilities to improve the appearance of 4GL programs. Informix 4GL uses the Unix TERMCAP file to display colors, window line boxes, and function keys. We will explore the lab from my Informix 4GL training class that shows how to improve the quality of your 4GL screen and window display, add colors, and correctly trap function keys.   We will demonstrate and provide code for a 4GL program to test your TERMCAP file.

Speaker: Lester Knutsen

Please register – Tech Talks September 29

 

 

Past Informix Tech Talks Replays

All Informix Tech Talks replays are available at: https://www.iiug.org/en/category/techtalks/
And on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/InformixTechTalksbytheIIUG

Replay of the last Informix TechTalks: Informix and Social Media: Reminding the World of Informix by Art S. Kagel

 

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 298 subscribers and more than 6,224 views. This YouTube Channel is the place for Informix how-to videos.

Informix Tech Talk YouTube Channel Videos

Past Informix Tech Talks Replays

Lester Knutsen

 

In Search of Tech Talks Speakers

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 Bruce Simms or Rhonda Hackenburg for additional information.

Rhonda Hackenburg
rhonda@iiug.org

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

Informix Purescale

Add MPP/DPF/XPS Clustering to Informix

Add support for an asynchronous/non-blocking Java API

 

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: 103 (+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: 97 (+1)

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: 87 (+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

Find start value of SERIAL/BIGSERIAL column

Pages allocated / pages used

TLS/SSL with IBM Data Server Driver      

Informix 14.10 FC8 installation on Linux

 

Gary Ben-Israel

 

 

Informix Resources

IIUG Website

Not a member, become an IIUG member and keep updated on all things Informix. It’s free.

 

IBM Informix Community

Not a member, join The IBM Informix community and connect with other Informix data experts.

 

IBM Informix RFE

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

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 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