Highlights: Complimentary Informix Certification/Badge Exam – Only at TechXchange 2025!

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

TechXchange 2025 is around the corner. We miss the IIUG Informix conferences with 300 Informix attendees and 4 days full of Informix sessions. However, it is good to see that at the TechXchange conference, which is covering all IBM software, there is an Informix track with 13 sessions. Check out the Conference Corner for a the list of Informix sessions and times.

Other things at TechXchange:

You will be able to get your Informix certification/badge at TechXchange, a complimentary benefit for attendees
HCL is sponsoring an Actian Happy Hour October 8.

Not all the IIUG board will attend. But many of us will be there.

If you are an IIUG member or if you are interested in Informix, we will be happy to meet you.

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

Highlights

Complimentary Informix Certification/Badge Exam – Only at TechXchange 2025!

Get certified and showcase your Informix expertise at TechXchange 2025! As a special offer for conference attendees, you can take the Informix Administration Certification Exam for free, available exclusively at this event. Don’t miss this opportunity to validate your skills, boost your professional profile, and stand out in the data management community.

Anup Nair
IBM

Conference Corner

IBM TechXchange Conference 2025 – Orlando, FL, USA

IBM TechXchange 2025

October 6-9, 2025

Orlando, Florida USA

30% Discount Extended to September 21, 2025

Use code IIUG at checkout

Don’t forget, you will receive a complimentary pass to obtain your Informix Certification/Badge at TechXchange 2025!

Feel free to share this email!

NOTE: You will be taken to the IBM sign in page to register for this event. You must have an IBM account to register for this event. There is a link on the page to create your IBM account.

Feel free to use one (or all) of these social media tiles to let others know you will be attending! Share your reasons for attending on your social media pages.

Invite colleagues to join us at IBM TechXchange 2025!

Other available pass options:

Single Day Pass
Community Day Pass – Monday, October 6
Student Day Pass
IBM Champions receive a complementary pass (you should have received an email from IBM with instructions)

NOTE: You will you will be taken to the IBM sign in page to register for this event. You must have an IBM account to register for this event. There is a link on the page to create your IBM account.

Are you having problems convincing management to let you attend? Check out our reasons to attend flyer. You might find something there to help you!

The schedule has been released for TechXchange 2025:

Tuesday, October 7

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM	IDS 15.0 – Unlimited and Future Proof	John Lengyel	HCL
11:30 AM – 11:50 AM	Go live with your business AI use case in just 2 weeks – stay ahead of the competition	Henri Cujass	leolo IT
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM	Managing and Optimizing and IBM Informix Server using the Sysmaster Database	Lester Knutsen	Advanced DataTools Corporation
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM	Test to SQL Agent powered by Informix and Watsonx	Xavier Escoté Vicente Salvador Cubedo	Deister
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM	Database Operations (DbOps)	Davorin Kremenjas	Sveucilisni racunski centar
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM	Externalize smartblob documents using new release of IBM Informix 15	Vicente Salvador Cubedo	DEISTER, S.A.

Wednesday, October 8

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM	Informix Encryption Everywhere Everyway	Thomas Beebe	xDB Systems
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM	Proactive Informix Administration	Mike Walker	xDB Systems
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM	Informix 4GL Futures	John Lengyel	HCL
3:30 PM – 4:30 PM	Upgrading versions and/or migrating platforms for your Informix Database	Joseph Veleeparambil	HCL
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM	Next-Gen Informix: Leveraging Cloud-Native Capabilities with Kubernetes and Containers	Kevin Mayfield	HCL

Thursday, October 9

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM	All About Onconfig Parameters for Informix and PFSC (Partition Free Space Cache) Boost	John Lengyel	HCL
9:30 AM – 10:30 AM	Turn Your Informix Data in Data Products	Scott Norris	Actian
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM	Informix: Detecting and Avoiding Performance Issues Related to Storage and Multinode Systems	Vladimir Kolobrodov	HCL

Are you having problems convincing management to let you attend? Check out our reasons to attend flyer. You might find something there to help you!

We can’t wait to see you in Orlando!

#IIUG #IBMTechXchange #Informix

Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board

HCL Informix Happy Hour Promotion

Upcoming: Actian Happy Hour @ the Hampton Social Orlando – Oct 8, 2025

If you’re attending the IBM TechXchange Conference in Orlando, join Actian for an exclusive Happy Hour Reception on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, from 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM ET at The Hampton Social – Orlando.

Step away from the conference buzz and enjoy a relaxed evening with fellow developers and DBAs over craft cocktails, light bites, and great conversation — all in a vibrant, coastal-inspired setting just steps from the venue.

HCL Informix® experts will be there, including:

John (JC) Lengyel, Chief Architect
Kevin Mayfield, Director of Engineering
Joseph Veleeparambil, Director of Services
Vladimir Kolobrodov, Performance Engineer
Scott Norris, Solution Engineer

Space is limited — don’t miss this opportunity to network, relax, and connect with peers and the Actian team.

» Register Now

Informix is a trademark of IBM Corporation in at least one jurisdiction and is used under license.

Informix Corner

Upcoming: HCL Informix® Virtual User Day – Sept 11, 2025

If you’re working hands-on with HCL Informix®, don’t miss the HCL Informix Virtual User Day on Thursday, September 11, 2025, at 8 AM PT | 11 AM ET | 5 PM CET.

This is a 2-hour developer- and DBA-focused session with practical content and direct access to the people behind Informix 15. Topics include:

What’s changed in HCL Informix 15—performance, features, and roadmap
Upgrade guidance and lessons learned from recent deployments
Underused capabilities that can simplify dev and admin tasks
How 4Js tools can help modernize HCL Informix-based applications

You’ll hear from core team members like:

JC Lengyel – Chief Architect, Actian
Scott Norris – Partner Sales Engineer, Actian
Michael Folcher – Director, Professional Services, 4Js

There will be live chat Q&A throughout, with specialists available to answer technical, upgrade, and licensing questions.

» Register Now here – It’s free and built for people who use HCL Informix every day.

Informix is a trademark of IBM Corporation in at least one jurisdiction and is used under license.

Emily Taylor
HCL Software

Fix list for Informix Server 14.10.xC12 release – IBM

Informix Server provides periodic fixes for release 14.10.xC12. The following list is the most recent report of defect fixes for customer-reported defects in 14.10.xC12 releases. This report combines both Windows and UNIX-specific defect fixes and is more current than the defect information included in the product release.

Informix TimeSeries

One of the most powerful and time-proven features in Informix is the TimeSeries data type and its associated capabilities. Unlike many databases that require a separate specialized engine for time-series workloads, Informix includes native TimeSeries support as part of its multi-model architecture. That means you can manage time-stamped data right alongside relational, JSON, spatial, and other data types all in a single platform.

While setup is a bit more involved than creating a standard table, the long-term performance and storage benefits can be substantial. If you work with any kind of chronological data, it’s worth exploring this feature.

What it is:

The TimeSeries data type in Informix is designed and optimized for storing and analyzing time-stamped data whether it’s readings from IoT sensors, financial tick data, utilities consumption, or any dataset that grows continuously over time.
TimeSeries stores data in containers rather than row-by-row, which reduces overhead and allows Informix to manage large volumes of time-based data efficiently.

Why it’s useful:

Efficient storage at scale
Fast querying and analytics for time-based data analysis
Automatic data retention and roll-up summaries and compression
Includes TimeSeries Virtual Tables (VTI) for SQL access
High-Performance ingestion
Built-in Functions for Time-Series Analysis Informix includes specialized functions for windowing, aggregation, and pattern detection over time intervals (e.g., moving averages, seasonal comparisons). These reduce the need for heavy external ETL or custom code.

Example Use Cases:

IoT sensor data tracking – e.g., temperature, vibration, or pressure readings every few seconds.
Financial tick data – capturing stock trades, quotes, or other real-time market events.
Smart grid/utilities – monitoring energy, water, or gas consumption over time.
Telecom network monitoring – storing time-based events, usage, or error logs at scale.

Working with Informix TimeSeries generally involves defining a TimeSeries container, creating a TimeSeries row type, and then inserting data into it using built-in functions like TSInsert()

If you want to practice querying time series data before you define and load your time series, you can use the sample data in the stores_demo database.

More details can be found in the TimeSeries Data User’s Guide.

Final Thoughts:

Informix TimeSeries is a specialized, high-performance feature that delivers exceptional results for workloads dealing with massive volumes of time-stamped data. TimeSeries allows developers and DBAs to efficiently manage IoT, financial, and utility datasets within the Informix engine itself.

If your application involves chronological data, investing the time to learn Informix TimeSeries can pay off in performance, manageability, and scalability.

Karen Qualley
HCL

Informix Tech Talks on YouTube

Upcoming Informix Tech Talks

There is currently no Tech Talks scheduled for September.

Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board

Last Informix Tech Talks Replay

Replay of the Last Informix Tech Talks: InformixHQ 3.1.0 – Ajay Satbhadre, August 2025

Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel

Our YouTube Channel now has:

563 subscribers (1 new subscriber)
115 videos (1 new video)
24,457 views (422 additional views)

Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel Videos

Past Informix Tech Talks Replays

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 Art Kagel or Bruce Simms 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/

RFE Corner

IBM has an RFE – Request For Enhancements website.
Please visit the RFE site to vote for your favorite enhancements and place new requests. It is friendly and has a nice look and feel.

Recent

Connection Manager should check if a secondary server is in sync before allowing connections to that server

Backup Individual database, not entire instance (95 votes)

IBM Informix Forum Corner

Join and visit the IBM Informix Community Forum

Recent Posts:

oncheck warning,What impact will it have on the future?

Need Advice on preparation work before upgrading to IDS 15.0.0.1

How long has a transaction or query been running?

Ontape restore with differenct DB Chunk spaces

Any concern if use JDBC 15 to connect with IDS 14.10.FC10W2?

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Board

How To

In this corner I will write about things that can help in your day-to-day work.

Most DBAs probably have their own ways to perform these tasks which may be different than the way I do them. So, if you find an error or can think of a better way, please let me know. If not feel free to use these tips as is or modify them to fit your needs.

Today’s topic is a stored procedure we use to calculate correlation between two columns.

Unfortunately, there is no function that calculates correlation. The only way I found to do it and allow calculating correlation between any two result sets was passing the select statement to the stored procedure.

Not elegant but it works. It can be any select statement as long as it returns two float values. It returns one value so it can be used in a view along with other aggregates.

create function corr_sp(sel_str lvarchar(1000)) 
returning decimal(6,2) 

define corr1, corr2, sxy, sx, sy float; 
define sx2, sy2, ax, ay, r_sc float; 
define cor_xy decimal(6,2); 
define n int; 

let n = 0; 
let sxy = 0; 
let sx = 0; 
let sy = 0; 
let sx2 = 0; 
let sy2 = 0; 

prepare prep_st from sel_str; 
declare corr_curs cursor for prep_st; 
open corr_curs; 

loop 
  fetch corr_curs 
   into corr1, corr2; 
  exit when SQLCODE = 100; 
    let n = n + 1; 
    let sxy = sxy + (corr1 * corr2); 
    let sx = sx + corr1; 
    let sy = sy + corr2; 
    let sx2 = sx2 + (corr1 * corr1); 
    let sy2 = sy2 + (corr2 * corr2); 
end loop; 

close corr_curs; 
free corr_curs; 

if n = 0 then 
  return -101.0; 
end if 

if ((sx2 / n) - (sx * sx)) = 0 or ((sy2 / n) - (sy * sy)) = 0 then 
  return -102.0; 
end if 

let ax = sx / n; 
let ay = sy / n; 
let cor_xy = ((sxy / n) - (ax * ay)) / 
sqrt(((sx2 / n) - (ax * ax)) * ((sy2 / n) - (ay * ay))); 

return cor_xy; 
end function;

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Board

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.

Blogs

Art Kagel – https://informix-myview.blogspot.com/

Mary Schulte – ACTIAN https://www.actian.com/blog/databases/user-friendly-external-smartblobs-using-a-shadow-directory/

IBM Informix RFE

IBM Informix RFE – Informix Requests for Enhancements.

Technical Articles

Oninit Group
WAIUG (Washington Area Informix User Group) Tech Tips
Over 10 Years of Informix Webcast Replays
Over 30 Years of Informix Blog Posts

Social Media

YouTube

Facebook

IIUG’s own Art Kagel was recently features on the Tech Sharmit Podcast to talk about his life and involvement with Informix and database systems.
Catch the podcast here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l81pLa7i-J0)

Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines

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