IIUG Insider (Issue #267) October 2022

Highlights: IIUG BOD – Nominations Close November 7

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

2022 is coming to an end. Things are good both with IBM and HCL. We are sorry we were not able to have an IIUG event this year. We are planning to have an event in 2023. 

 

IMPORTANT: Informix 14.10 Badge Exam is still available! 

IBM is considering removing this exam from its portfolio, due to what they view as lack of interest.  If you want this exam to continue to be available, please sign up today.  Let’s show IBM the Informix Community is interested.

Go to: https://www.iiug.org/event/informix-14-10-badge-exam-purchase/ to register.

 

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

Highlights

IIUG BOD – Nominations Close November 7

The elections for the IIUG Board of Directors was officially announced in the September Insider, our website and via an email blast. 

Nomination will be open until November 7th. 

If you would like to stand for election, go to https://www.iiug.org/en/iiug-board-elections-2023-24/ and follow the instructions. 

Serving on the IIUG board is hard work and requires commitment but it is rewording. 

We would like to have new members with new ideas so please join us. 

The IIUG Board and nominating committee will review the nominees and announce the nominees to the IIUG community on November 21 on our website and via email. 

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

Informix Corner

How to secure communication now that ENCCSM is deprecated

Communication support modules is IBM Informix’s way to encrypt data transmissions over the network. It provided a way to secure communication in early days, but as industry moved towards SSL standards, IBM Informix started supporting SSL protocol as well. IBM Informix was supporting ENCCSM as well as SSL for encryption of data over the network. From 14.10.FC9, ENCCSM functionality will be deprecated. 

In absence of ENCCSM the alternative for secured communication is to use SSL/TLS protocol. Using SSL protocol has following advantages over ENCCSM. 

  • You can use SSL for encrypted communication with both DRDA and SQLI clients whereas you can communicate with only SQLI clients using ENCCSM. 
  • Setting up SSL communication is simpler compared to setting up ENCCSM. 

Listing the connections supporting SSL communication: 

  • IBM Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ connections with Informix® 
  • IBM Informix ESQL/C connections with Informix 
  • IBM Informix ODBC Driver connections with Informix 
  • DB-Access connections 
  • Enterprise Replication connections 
  • High-availability data replication (HDR) connections between an HDR primary server and one or more secondary servers of any type (HDR secondary, SD secondary, or RS secondary) 
  • Distributed transaction connections, which span multiple database servers 
  • The dbexport, dbimport, dbschema, and dbload utility connections 
  • Connection Manager connections between servers in a cluster 

Using SSL protocol for client server communication involves two steps: 

Sunil Kajarekar 

 

Informix Tech Talks on YouTube

Upcoming Informix Tech Talks

Title: Informix 14 – A Features Review with Carlton Doe and Scott Pickett
Date: Thursday, November 17, 2022
Time: 10:00 am EST

Description: Join the IIUG as we welcome Carlton Doe and Scott Pickett who will share the IIUG Informix 14.10 features.

PLEASE NOTE: This is an extended TechTalks event with three sessions and a Q&A to follow.  This event is expected to run 3+ hours with breaks.

AGENDA:

Informix 14.10.FC5-FC7 Features Scott
Informix Replication Improvements and 14.10.FC8 Features Carlton
Informix 14.10.FC1-FC4 Features Scott
Questions & Answers Carlton & Scott

Carlton Doe is an Executive IT Specialist – North American Core Data Server Sales at IBM. He was one of the five founders of the International Informix Users Group (IIUG).

Scott Pickett is the Worldwide Technical Sales Principal Consultant at IBM.

Hope you can join us.

Please register – Informix 14 – A Features Review

Rhonda Hackenburg
rhonda@iiug.org

 

 

Title: Washington Area Informix Users Group Meeting
Date: Thursday, December 8, 2022
Time: 9:00 am EST

We are excited to be back with another winter user group meeting. Everyone seems to be happier with virtual user group meetings so we are going to stick with it for a bit.

So please join us the morning of 12/8/22 for a great set of technical discussions.

We still have one open user speaker slot, so if you are interested, please reach out to tom@xdbsystems.com or rhackenb@pacle.org.

Speaker: Various

For more information visit www.waiug.org

Rhonda Hackenburg
rhonda@iiug.org

 

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: What is New in Informix 14.10.FC8 by Carlton Doe

 

Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel

We now have 311 subscribers to our YouTube channel.
We have 82 videos on YouTube on our Channel.
Our Channel has received over 7,059 views so far!

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

 

NEW! Informix 14.10.xC9 Is Out

This October, IBM released the new xC9 version of Informix IDS. This is mainly a bug fixing release and not many new features or changes were deployed with this version.

You can get what is new in this release at: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/informix-servers/14.10?topic=overview-whats-new-in-informix#xc9_new.

Vicente Salvador
vicente@iiug.org

 

Informix Trials and Downloads Site

As covered in the recent FC8 webcast, the Informix Trials and Downloads site has become the comprehensive repository for CSDK and JDBC drivers. All available 4.10 and 4.50 drivers are now located there along with the Developer Edition and Time Limited engine downloads. 

In some cases, customers are having troubles accessing the Trials and Download site. Once logged in, they get an error that says “Oops something went wrong.” This is due to an erroneous parameter included in the URL used.  The correct URL to access the Trials and Downloads for all files is: 

https://www.ibm.com/resources/mrs/assets?source=ifxids&lang=en_US 

If you have any further questions or issues, don’t hesitate to reach out to Scott or me.

Carlton Doe

 

2023 IBM Champion Nominations are Open

Think you have what it takes to be an IBM Champion? IBM has open nominations until mid-November 2022 for the 2023 class.  For more information visit https://community.ibm.com/community/user/champions/blogs/libby-ingrassia/2022/09/22/nominate-the-2023-class-of-ibm-champions

To become an IBM Champion, they are nominated and selected by a selection committee. They may be nominated by an IBMer, colleague, community member, or may nominate themselves. Selection committees will be meeting regularly through the end of November. 2023 IBM Champions will be announced in early January.

What’s the path to becoming an IBM Champion?

Advocacy is a journey – and being an IBM Champion is at the pinnacle of accomplishments. There are many entry points; here are a few  examples (although of course this is not an exhaustive list). In general, to become an IBM Champion, you will have done 2 or more of these activities consistently over a period of time:

  • Be an active member of the IBM Community, regularly answering questions or blogging.
  • Be an active member of another community focused on IBM technology or products, regularly answering questions or blogging.
  • Be an active leader, board member, or active committee member of a local, regional, national, international, or virtual user group or meetup group.
  • Regularly write blogs, articles, books.
  • Create videos. podcasts, webinars, or other teaching sessions.
  • Speak at conferences and events.
  • Help IBM improve on products and solutions by actively participating in beta programs, usability studies, and other types of research.
  • Help mentor new community members and drives them to community sites.
  • Contribute to open source community projects, shares code, and provides other solutions for use in and by the community.
  • Use social media channels (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, podcasting, and others) to share content and drive awareness to IBM or community topics and events.

IBM Champion home:

https://community.ibm.com/community/user/champions/home

Stuart Litel
IBM

 

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/

Lester Knutsen

 

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 changing of S3 Prefix for onbar backups 

 

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: 104 (+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: 98 (+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: 88 (+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

Informix – uniqueidentifier 

Excalibur on Linux 

Potentially Serious HDR Failover Bug 

Trying Install 12.10 on MAC OS Big Sur … 

kernel: INFO: task oninit:1720 blocked for more than 120 seconds. 

Performance V 14 is significantly slower compared to v 11 

New location for CSDK / JDBC files, correct URL for Trials and Downloads 

 

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