Highlights: Short Note from the President
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
My first new year editorial was in December 2005. I wrote it in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and German. I kept doing it until 2010. Since then, It seems there is no point.
2022 was OK. Informix is still alive and kicking. IBM and HCL are keeping the product going.
The IIUG is struggling to serve the user community. We did not have a conference in 2022.
We are hoping to have one in 2023. However, our YouTube channel created in 2021 has 89 videos, 66 have been added in 2022 and has nearly 8,000 views. More than all our conferences combined.
We do know what happened with Informix in 2022. So, let’s hope it will be even better in 2023.
The IIUG Board is wishing the IIUG community a happy New Year.
Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
gary@iiug.org
Highlights
Short Note from the President
Hello IIUG Members,
Happy New Year and many blessings to all of you in 2023!
2022 was a good year for Informix and the IIUG. However, we didn’t accomplish everything we sought out to do.
We wanted to do an in-person event, since we haven’t had one in three years. Unfortunately, a number of circumstances got in the way of us fulfilling that mission.
This year we will do our best to hold an IIUG event either in person or virtual.
On a more positive note, thanks to Lester Knutsen, we were able to execute Monthly IIUG Tech Talks. These are available for replay on the IIUG YouTube channel. We hope to continue with this same format this year, with the first Tech talk coming up in February.
Lastly, I would like to personally thank Ognjen Orel and Lester Knutsen for their years of service on the IIUG Board of Directors. Both will be terribly missed. I would also like to welcome Tom Beebe and Henri Cujass as new board members for this term. We are looking forward to working with them.
Best,
Cindy
Informix Corner
Informix Tech Talks on YouTube
Upcoming Informix Tech Talks
Title: Informix Sysmaster Database Queries for Monitoring and Performance Tuning
Date: Thursday, February 2, 2023
Time: 2:00 pm EST
Description: Lester Knutsen will present his 12 latest Informix Systmaster Scripts for monitoring and performance tuning tips. This presentation introduces Informix performance from his Advanced Informix Performance Tuning Course. We will cover disk and chunk I/O, Log Turnover, Performance Ratios, Table and Index I/O, and identify the slowest SQL statements.
Bio: Lester Knutsen is an IBM Informix Lifetime Champion with over 40 years of Informix experience
Rhonda Hackenburg
rhonda@iiug.org
Past Informix Tech Talks Replays
Replay of the Last Informix TechTalks: WAIUG Virtual Meeting December 8, 2022:
- Welcome and Doing Storage Better by Art Kagel
- Informix HQ by Shubham Kapoor
- Explaining Explain Plans by Mike Walker
- Conclusion, Oracle Style Global Temp Tables by Art Kagel
Visit WAIUG’s website for more information.
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
Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel
We now have 332 subscribers to our YouTube channel.
We have 89 videos on YouTube on our Channel.
Our Channel has received over 7,915 views so far!
Informix Tech Talk YouTube Channel Videos
Past Informix Tech Talks Replays
Bruce Simms
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
IIUG Board
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
Ability to rotate encryption at rest keys on the Engine
SSO (Single Sign-On) for ODBC connections via ActiveDirectory authentication
Add optional WHERE condition to MERGE statement
Fixing IPA in a 15TB OLTP database or large database
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 (+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: 98 (+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: 88 (+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
Hibernate 6 does not support Informix anymore
ALTER TABLE removes it from audit trail
Unable to interrupt SQL queries in some cases
index on timestamp & optimizer strategy failure
Informix 11.5 and Server 2012R2 – Database stuck in Quiescent Mode
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 |
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 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