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IIUG Alert (Issue #17)
February 22, 2002

Other Issues

Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Alert! It contains time-sensitive material for the IBM Informix community. You are receiving it because you are an IIUG member or a local Informix user group leader.

CONTENTS:

  1. Last Call For 2002 Americas Conference Input! - Deadline February 28
  2. IBM/Informix Q4’01 Sales Successes
  3. Web Conference Features E-Business Solutions with IBM and Four J's
  4. IIUG Membership Metrics Show Continued Growth and Activity
  5. New Software Repository Page Features Recent Additions
  6. IBM Demonstrates Commitment to Informix Tools
  7. Oracle Leakage Headlined
  8. 2001 Informix Conference Survey
  9. Useful Links
  10. Closing and Credits

Last Call For 2002 Americas Conference Input! - Deadline February 28

Thanks to all who have submitted your content suggestions for the upcoming Informix User Conference (IUC). Your contribution will definitely make a difference.

For those who haven’t gotten to it, the deadline for submission of input to the "Call for Papers" and "Ideas for Topics" forms on the IIUG Web site is February 28, so this is the LAST WEEK TO SUBMIT YOUR IDEAS!

IBM and the IIUG are currently in the process of defining content and looking to you for breakout session and tutorial suggestions. Are you interested in technology and solution-oriented product presentations, success stories, road maps, panel discussions with experts in a specific area, or introduction to other IBM products? How about a discussion on WAP, Web, OLTP, Business Intelligence, Connectivity, Tools, DataMart or Data Warehousing technologies? You can still give us your input by completing the forms before the deadline. But time is running out, so act now!

To submit your name and abstract for a presentation for this year's conference, go to:

http://www.iiug.org/call4papers.html

You can also use IIUG’s site to submit ideas for what you would like to see presented by fellow users, IBM Business Partners, IBM architects, developers, or marketing personnel. Submit your ideas at:

http://www.iiug.org/iictopics.html

Don't miss this opportunity to assist the IUC Planning Committee!

IBM/Informix Q4'01 Sales Successes

The IBM Informix news web site carries a press release covered by Yahoo Finance, which points to significant Informix end-of-year sales successes. Highlights are:

After reporting that "10,000 Informix customers recommitted to IBM in the fourth-quarter" the article continues:

"IBM recently announced its 19th consecutive quarter of growth in its data management business. In the fourth-quarter, IBM's data management portfolio grew 48 percent."

"The Informix acquisition is exceeding our expectations. We appreciate the overwhelming support from the thousands of Informix customers and partners who are committed to IBM," said Janet Perna, general manager, IBM Data Management Solutions

"IBM is the leader in delivering the most innovative data management technology in the industry and surpasses the competition in scalability, reliability and total cost of ownership. In 2001, IBM was awarded 132 database software patents, two times more than its nearest competitor."

The IBM Informix news site is at:

http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/news/informix.html

And the Informix story covered by Yahoo is at:

http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/020125/037220.html

Web Conference Features E-Business Solutions with IBM and Four J's

You are invited to attend an hour long live Web Conference, "e-Business Solutions with IBM and Four J's" using PlaceWare Web Conferencing on March 06, 2002, at 9:00 AM, US Pacific Standard Time (PST).

IBM and Four J's have recently engaged as new partners in the sale of rapid deployment, e-business solution technology for your Informix-4GL applications and your Informix and DB2 databases. Come hear how the Four J's Business Development Suite (BDS) can move 1000s of users from green screens to GUI. Find out how Four J's BDS may help you to grow your business by offering choices you didn’t have until now. Learn how Four J's BDS gets you to an e-business solution quickly and easily. You will also get an overview of Four J's latest releases and a sneak peak into future releases.

Ron Flannery, IIUG Board Member, Stephen Sykes, Four J's VP Americas, and Meg Hilbert, IBM Marketing Manager, will host this event.

To find instructions for this conference via the IIUG home page, please visit our web site www.iiug.org and look under "Highlights for Today".

IIUG Membership Metrics Show Continued Growth and Activity

Thanks to the efforts of IIUG Board member Hal Maner and Informix technology, we have begun tracking the evolution of our membership and have learned good news:

The size of our membership increased during the month of January by 173 members, and, more importantly, the number of "fully qualified" active members increased by 402! The biggest gain in active members was from the US with 298 more active members. Outside of the US, an additional 104 fans of Informix activated their membership.

Over time, the IIUG Board’s ability to slice and dice the membership database will improve IIUG’s ability to focus its attention where it is needed most and identify opportunities to encourage the formation of new Local User Group chapters.

New Software Repository Page Features Recent Additions

Walt Hultgren, IIUG Software Repository Administrator and IIUG co- founder, reports that there have been recent additions to the software repository, which are worth checking out by developers seeking to expand their tool set.

New submissions include "mon buffer" to monitor buffer utilization and "logcheck" which reads log numbers from logical log tapes. There are also updates to several programs including "who access" which determines who is accessing or locking a table.

A special page just to list new submissions and updates has been added by Walt to assist members in keeping up with the latest changes to the repository. It can be viewed at:

http://www.iiug.org/software/repository_news.html

If you haven't visited the repository lately, see what you've been missing! This is the location where members freely share their solutions in the best community spirit.

IBM Demonstrates Commitment to Informix Tools

IBM Informix application development tools (IBM Informix 4GL Compiled, Rapid Development System, Interactive Debugger, and I-SQL) version 7.31.UC1 are now generally available according to a recent announcement by Meg Hilbert, IBM Data Management Marketing Manager for the Informix Portfolio.

In addition to various bug fixes, the three primary enhancements include:

- Support for Long IDs, which are especially important for IBM IDS 9.x users, who can now exceed the 18 character naming limitation (e.g. table name)

- Support for NCHAR and NVARCHAR

- Commonly shared libraries between 4GL, 4GL RDS, SQL and Client SDK are now fully compatible with each other allowing easier installation of these products.

More releases are being worked on too! The IBM technical and marketing teams received some great feedback from customers and partners who had called in on a special phone conference January 31 to discuss 4GL- application access to DB2 databases. It sounds like the DB2 access is important to the community, so we should see some more announcements on that feature set soon. The participants on the calls were also happy to hear about upcoming support for Dynamic Arrays and XML output support.

Don't forget to call your IBM Account Executive or Technical Support contact to get set up with this newest tools release.

Oracle Leakage Headlined

An interesting InfoWorld news item was picked up and shared with the IIUG Board recently, which may interest our membership. The article is headlined "UNBREAKABLE" ORACLE9I SPRINGS A LEAK”.

Posted February 06, the article, out of San Francisco, begins "Despite the vendor's claims, Oracle's Oracle9i database is breakable, a U.K. security firm reported Wednesday."

The article continues stating "Several security flaws were discovered in the company's software, including one that could allow a hacker to gain access to Oracle's database server without a user ID or password. The flaws were discovered by a security expert from Next Generation Security Software Ltd., based in Sutton, U.K."

The full story can be read here:

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/02/06/020206hnbreakable.xml?0207tham

The flaw was also reported by Computerworld at this location:

http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO68105,00.html

We are guessing Oracle’s Marketing message just might not quite float!

2001 Informix Conference Survey

Many of you have already provided excellent feedback on last year’s IBM Informix Conference. But we don’t want to miss yours, so, if you haven't already done so, now would be a great time to complete the 2001 IIC Conference Survey located on our web site at:

http://www.iiug.org/cgi-bin/fglcl.cgi?iicsurvey

Your voluntary contribution of time to complete the survey is a vital component of planning efforts to continuously improve our conferences and maximize their benefit to our membership. We want events that are relevant, useful and fun.

NOTE: We're interested in your feedback even if you couldn't attend that event!

Useful Links

Closing and Credits

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between IBM and its worldwide user community. IIUG now approaches 13,000 members and enjoys the support and commitment of IBM's Data 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
Editors: David Smith and Ron Flannery, IIUG Board of Directors

For comments, please send an email to UG@IIUG.ORG.