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IIUG Insider (Issue #44)
29 January 2004

Other Issues

Highlights: New Year, New User Group, Prague Conference in October, New conference & More...

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.

Contents:

  1. Best Wishes for 2004
  2. Respond by Monday: EMEA One-Question Survey: Would you attend an October Informix conference in Prague?
  3. Sam Gentsch Profiled
  4. Insider More Open and to be Released Monthly
  5. IIUG Software Repository News
  6. BeIUG Meeting Summary
  7. Intel, IBM Backing New Fund to Defend Linux Users
  8. EMEA Data Management Technical Conference: 1 - 5 March in Madrid
  9. Awoma Helps IBM-Informix Users Adopt WebSphere
  10. Expanded Opportunities for Informix and IBM Business Partners
  11. Now It's Even Easier for IBM Informix System Administrators to Become DB2 UDB-Certified
  12. Encryption Over the Wire with IDS 9.40
  13. Useful Links
  14. Closing and Credits

Best Wishes for 2004

Once more, a new year has come...

The IIUG board wanted to wish you a very happy, prosperous and healthy new year.

2004 will be an eventful year, starting right now with the beta version of WebSphere EGL -- the next generation of 4GL -- as well as a new EMEA user conference in Madrid, from 1st March to 5 March 2004.

As 2004 comes, your favorite Insider will also evolve: it will be produced monthly and will be open to more software vendors... We expect future issues to be a bit bigger as well, so you might consider subscribing to the HTML version for better document navigation (see below).

Anyway, having said all that: Best wishes for you, your family and your Informix installations.

Sincerely,

The Insider team

Respond by Monday: EMEA One-Question Survey: Would you attend an October Informix conference in Prague?

If you are an EMEA IIUG member and you have not responded yet, jump to the link below:

http://www.iiug.org/cgi-bin/fglcl.cgi?survey1

IIUG has spoken to the International DB2 User Group (http://www.idug.org) about presenting some Informix information at its conference in Prague this October. We know that European Informix users would like a more localized conference and to determine your interest, we ask that you participate in this ONE QUESTION survey. Without a strong enough response, we probably won't be able to offer any presence at this conference. There will be no guarantee that we'll be able to do this; we are just polling for interest.

Details:

IDUG 2004 Europe
11-14 October 2004
Prague, Czech Republic
http://conferences.idug.org/europe/2004/

OUR QUESTION FOR YOU:

If we were able to provide 1-2 days of Informix sessions (one per time period), would you be interested in attending this conference?

http://www.iiug.org/cgi-bin/fglcl.cgi?survey1

Sam Gentsch Profiled

Here it is again -- time for a new board and new profiles... Let's discover together board member Sam Gentsch.

Q:How do you use Informix in your "real" job (DBA, Consultant, Developer, etc.)?
A:Mostly I am a DBA, but I occasionally branch out to consulting and development.
 
Q:How long have you been using Informix products?
A:I started in 1997 with a 10TB - 112 SP2 XPS system, a 2TB IDS 7 system and a few other Informix instances of various flavors.
 
Q:What is your role on the IIUG Board?
A:I will be helping out with the Insider, the website and webcasts.
 
Q:Why did you volunteer to be on the board?
A:I love working with Informix, and want to do my part to let people know what an amazing RDBMS it is.
 
Q:What do you want to accomplish this year on the Board?
A: I want to evangelize Informix, get to know the Informix community worldwide, and hopefully kindle more interest in IIUG and Informix.
 
Q:Where are you from?
A:I claim Crestview, a small town in the panhandle of Florida, though growing up I lived in England, Germany, and briefly in Spain as well as several states in the US.
 
Q:Best Informix story?
A:Parallel unloading a multi-terabyte system to 10 pipes (connected to another system) and parallel loading that system at the same time...ZOOM. It is all I have to say.
 
Q:Worst Informix nightmare.
A:During the IDS 8.3 Beta tests we ran into some issues with very large joins...it took us a LONG while to determine we had found a bug in the build. The engineers wasted no time and provided a fix, so the nightmare was very short lived.
 
Q:Can you tell us about your family and hobbies outside of IIUG?
A:My wife and I have a small zoo, dogs, cats, parrots, poison arrow frogs, a green tree python and a rainbow boa. Those critters keep me fairly busy. I occasionally make it into the mountains to hike, fish, hunt and camp.
 

Insider More Open and to be Released Monthly

The IIUG Insider is temporarily becoming a monthly publication. Although it may seem easy to gather news and paste them together in an mail, producing the Insider is time consuming and complex. While the 2004 IIUG Board transitions in place, the Insider will be a monthly publication. However, we expect it to return to its regular bi-weekly schedule. Meanwhile, we appreciate your patience. We are committed to bringing you the valuable Informix-related news and information that you've become accustomed to receiving.

On behalf of the Insider team, I would like to thank Mr. Federico (Fred) Hubbard for his huge commitment to the Insider.

Our president wanted the Insider to be more open to Software vendors that provides solution around Informix products. We want to show that the Informix world is not limited to what IBM proposes, but that other companies are really considering Informix as viable choice. Tell us about companies that you work with so we can contact them. If you work in such a company, contact us. The e-news team can be reached at enews@iiug.org.

IIUG Software Repository News

The IIUG Software Repository is one of the numerous free services IIUG members can access. It is certainly the most comprehensive download site for Informix-related scripts and programs.

Here is Peter Wages' report from the IIUG Software Repository.

The following are the latest submissions to the repository.

  • Art Kagel: recently provided a new version of utils2_ak and datelib_ak.
  • Jonathan Leffler: submitted a new version of sqlcmd
  • Robert Sosnowski: submitted a new version of load2

More details are at http://www.iiug.org/software/repository_news.html

BeIUG Meeting Summary

On 5 January 2004, we had a very nice user meeting with some Belgian Informix users, some IBMers and myself, representing IIUG. This meeting took place in Brussels, Belgium, at the IBM location.

We had various presentations and chats about:

  • IBM strategy
    Jacques Borremans (IBM)
  • Developing Software with RADs around IDS
    (covering 4GL and clones, WebSphere EGL and Java alternatives)
    Jean Georges Perrin (IIUG)
  • What's new and what's planned around Informix products
    Ronny Kerkhofs (IBM)
  • GSE: Guide Share Europe, what can GSE do for IBM Informix users?
    Jacques de Wilde (GSE)
    GSE might be a very good partner for all BeIUG activities.
  • IIUG Presentation: what can IIUG do for a Belgian Users Group?
    Jean Georges Perrin (IIUG)

From this meeting, we found a chairman for the Informix users group: Guy Dillen, Guy can be reached at guy.dillen@skynet.be.

Next meeting is planned on 2 March 2004. Talk to your Informix friends about it!

Guy will send all the details to all people having interest and IIUG will relay all this via its usual channels. Guy will need help to organize all this, so please do not hesitate to come back to him.

Thanks to all that participated and people from IBM and GSE that made this event possible.

Intel, IBM Backing New Fund to Defend Linux Users

We have found an interesting article about Linux, in these days when SCO is fighting against the world's most popular operating system... Here are a few snippets and a link to the article.

"Two of the largest backers of Linux..., are contributing to a new fund that will defend Linux users against copyright infringement lawsuits threatened by SCO Group Inc."

"An industry group formed to promote Linux... has formed a "Linux legal defense fund" and that the No. 1 computer company and No.1 semiconductor company have agreed to help fund it."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=4&u=/nm/20040112/tc_nm/tech_intel_dc

EMEA Data Management Technical Conference: 1 - 5 March in Madrid

Get tired of the bad weather in northern Europe? Well, personally I do! Let's go to Madrid from 1-5 March 2004 and enjoy (hopefully) sun and some technical information during the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Data Management Technical Conference.

You will find all information at: http://www-306.ibm.com/services/learning/conf/europe/index.php

Last minute information:

Wednesday, 3 March 2004 is Informix day! IIUG has negotiated with IBM a one day pass for 600 Euro, more details soon.

Awoma Helps IBM-Informix Users Adopt WebSphere

IIUG now offers more room for software vendor to express themselves in the Insider. In this issue, Nicolas Taureau, Worldwide Marketing Manager, tells us a bit more about Awoma.

"Founded by a team of Informix experts, Awoma provides a suite of development tools perfectly suited for IBM-Informix users. The tools will enable users to adopt current IBM technology, such as WebSphere, DB2 or J2EE, while leveraging existing assets.

Awoma tools include ThinStructure, DevWorkshop, SysTools and DataTools

ThinStructure will bridge the gap for IBM-Informix developers from legacy systems to J2EE and IBM WebSphere. Its familiar syntax, ease of use and speed of development will make any developer a J2EE expert in no time. ThinStructure will reduce the amount of code required to build an application by 70% compared to raw Java coding.

DevWorkshop is the graphical IDE for Awoma ThinStructure. Built around the award-winning Eclipse platform, DevWorkshop offers an all-in-one environment filled with many built-in components and modules. Its intuitive interface has ease and power in mind. DevWorkshop fully enforces the use of MVC: Model View Controller.

SysTools is a set of UNIX commands for the Microsoft Windows operating systems.

DataTools is a very convenient database manipulation tool. Integrated smoothly into Awoma DevWorkshop, DataTools allows you to:

  • View structure of database elements, such as the database itself, tables, view, system tables, columns, indexes, primary and foreign keys, constraints...
  • Query your database through an easy and efficient SQL editor.
  • Create batches of SQL statements.
  • Add, delete or modify your data efficiently

Developers familiar with i4GL, Cobol, Visual Basic and other legacy languages will appreciate Awoma's architecture and interface and quickly ramp up new technology strategies."

Visit http://www.awoma.com or mail to info@us.awoma.com.

Expanded Opportunities for Informix and IBM Business Partners

Join our January 30 teleconference to learn more about expanding your IBM portfolio in Small and Medium Business. This 1-hour teleconference will provide an overview of the SMB marketplace and our express portfolio, including IBM WebSphere Express and IBM DB2 Content Manager Express.

Enroll by calling 1-800-289-0579 or 719-457-2550 and reference Call Code 189360 or register on the web. Select RSVP (ReplyLine on the Web).

http://www.premconf.com/rsvp

Now It's Even Easier for IBM Informix System Administrators to Become DB2 UDB-Certified

If you hold a system administration certification for Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) V9, IDS V7 or RedBrick Warehouse V6, you are not required to take the fundamentals DB2 certification, exam 700. Now you can bypass exam 700 and move directly to an intermediate DB2 certification saving you money and valuable time.

For more information on exams available, please visit:

http://www.ibm.com/isource/cgi-bin/goto?on=IMNL014B39

Encryption Over the Wire with IDS 9.40

This article introduces various concepts and terminology involved in the science of cryptology. It discusses how the encryption technology has been incorporated in Informix Dynamic Server 9.4 and tells you how to configure an IDS 9.4 engine and clients to enable encrypting client-server communication.

http://www.ibm.com/isource/cgi-bin/goto?on=IMNL014B31

Useful Links

In response to your input, we have created a new page on the IIUG web site containing all the links we used to include. Please find it at:

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

Please visit the IBM Redbooks web site at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/mail for more details and up-to-the-minute technical information.

Closing and Credits

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between its worldwide user community and IBM. IIUG's membership database now exceeds 18,000 entries 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
IBM Corp.
Editors: Jean Georges Perrin
Ron Flannery
Sam Gentsch
Fred Hubbard
For comments, please send an email to enews@iiug.org.